Chapter XXVI
William's team emerged on to a Replika of the mountain sector, while Aelita's Skid found refuge in one of Sector Five.
"This is creepy," Giana noted as they docked, staring out from the inside of her Navskid.
"You'll all notice that I've taken the liberty to give each of you a communications device," Franz said. "Its purpose is to relay information between the Replikas and your real-world locations. They look like standard black smartwatches — just raise your wrist and speak into it so everyone else can hear you."
"Who's staying and who's going?" Aelita asked her team, ignoring him.
"I'll stay," Giana offered. "I'd rather guard the Skid."
"Alright. Yumi? Odd?"
"I'll go," Odd replied, without missing a beat.
"Aelita, you should stay," Yumi said gently. "I mean, it's up to you, but unless you really want to go on another wild goose chase…"
The girl nodded. "You're right. I'll watch the Skid."
"Okay," Franz said. "William and Jeremie have decided to go to the university. I'm starting the transfer process now. This will take a few minutes."
The boys landed in Cambridge, right in the middle of Harvard Yard.
"Well, this is ironic," William said, speaking into his comms device. "You know that whole 'Park your car in Harvard Yard' thing?"
"Yeah," Giana replied dryly. She brandished her weapon. "It's full of trees. No one can actually park there."
Jeremie looked around in awe. "Okay." He gripped the handle of his dagger. "By my calculations, we're somewhere on the southern part of the campus."
"You're correct. You're going to want to head north," Franz instructed. "It's about a five-minute walk." He paused. "I should've mentioned this earlier: In light of the materialization safeguards not fully up to par, this also affects how you appear in the real world. Usually no one can see you unless they're possessed, however…"
"You've got to be kidding me," William spat as they rounded the corner of a dorm building. "You mean we might get caught?!"
"If so, I'll have you out of there and back in the Skid before anything bad happens."
"That is something bad happening!" Jeremie shouted. "You've sent us to two of the most heavily-surveilled cities in the United States!" He spoke into his comms unit. "Are you all hearing this?!"
"Yes," Yumi replied curtly as she and Odd attempted to cross a very crowded Park Ave. A security camera on the corner of a building caught her eye. "We'll be careful."
"You'd notice right away," Franz said quickly, typing a few commands into his console. "The people around you would know immediately that you're not supposed to be there."
He was really trying to buy them some time in his excuses. Finding a permanent patch for the materialization bug was proving to be more and more difficult by the hour, not to mention his team members were also coming up empty-handed.
"Yeah," Odd said. "We stick out like a sore thumb! We're armed!"
"I'm trying my hardest to come up with a solution," the man admitted, redirecting their conversation. "My colleagues have been devoting every spare moment of their time to it since we got the data from Sector Five. If only…"
He paused once more, listening as a woman entered the room and whispered something in his ear in German.
"Franz?" Yumi prodded. "You there?"
She and Odd had finally reached The Met, but they weren't sure where to go from there. In the case of the Boston City Hall supercomputer, Aelita and Giana had just entered from an inconspicuous, unmarked door around the side.
"Yes," the man responded. "Sorry, a colleague of mine was briefing me — it seems we've found our solution to the issue with the materialization program. It was hidden deep in the roots of—"
"That's really great," Odd interrupted, firing a laser arrow and rendering a possessed piece of construction equipment useless. "Now can you give us some direction, here?"
"Right." He adjusted his glasses, focusing on their monitor. "You can walk in the front entrance. The way to access The Met's supercomputer is via their surveillance center: Once you enter the room, there's a hidden panel off to the right that houses an unmarked door. You're going to want to open it and head down the stairs, then follow the hallway to the right. The room you're looking for is at the very end, straight ahead."
"Got it," Odd said. "How are the others?"
"They're… managing."
"This is great," Sissi snapped, taking out another Blok as it tried to attack the Skid. "I swear, this is the last time I babysit the stupid submarine!"
"You could've gone with William," Ulrich countered, jumping away as a Tarantula exploded upon impact with one of his katanas. "You didn't have to stay."
"Let's be real here, for a second," she started, crossing her arms. "Jeremie has no idea what the hell he's doing on Lyoko — you said it yourself that the first time he ever really went, he was devirtualized by a Megatank and refused to go back!" She paused. "Plus, William already said he could be his right-hand man."
"Everyone has a tough first time on Lyoko!" the boy countered, sheathing his weapons. He stood on guard.
"Right, but he doesn't know how to fight. He was the better choice to go with William; at least if something bad happens in Cambridge, Franz can pull them out immediately. But — no offense — if he'd stayed here to protect the Skid, he wouldn't last two minutes."
Ulrich sighed. "I guess. But he never really wanted to learn. He's always been the brains of the operation; very rarely has he been the muscle."
"I just got a very interesting piece of information," Franz interrupted, making sure everyone could hear him. "We've been monitoring international news reports for quite a while, and apparently one of my colleagues failed to inform me of a small explosion at an unmarked entrance to Boston City Hall a few weeks ago."
The teams went silent. Aelita threw an Energy Field at a Creeper and missed.
"Jeremie and I heard two off-duty police officers talking about it on our way to the science center," William confirmed.
"Which one of you did it?" the man demanded, ignoring him.
No one wanted to rat Aelita out; however, she figured she should own up to her mistake. Franz was her father, and she guessed that did mean something.
"It was me," she said quietly. "I didn't realize it would be a problem."
"I asked if someone would notice it and you just brushed it off!" Giana exclaimed. "Boston's been rightfully paranoid ever since the Marathon Bombing!"
"What marathon bombing?" Odd inquired, speaking into his comms unit.
"It was in April, during a school vacation a few years back," the brunette clarified. "Two brothers placed homemade bombs at the marathon finish line. The fallout injured hundreds and killed three — four, actually, counting an MIT campus police officer who was shot later in the week. Anyway, it launched a five-day manhunt which placed Boston and its surrounding cities in lockdown. Our housekeeper couldn't make it and twelve-year-old me had to answer the door for two FBI agents who asked if we knew anything, as they'd been going house-to-house." She paused as she took out a Tarantula. "But, they caught one of the guys in a shootout — he hid in a boat in someone's backyard — and now he's in prison for life. The other was accidentally run over when they hijacked a car."
The boy's jaw dropped. "You said all that way too casually."
"I'm surprised, Odd," Jeremie said offhandedly. "That's why the Eiffel Tower lit up in color, remember?"
"That was four years ago! I barely remember what we learned in Mr. Fumet's class today!"
"You have to make these missions look like an accident!" Franz cut in, agitated. "I'm sure Jeremie's told you all time and time again that we don't want attention called to us. This has to be done silently, and swiftly. That's why the safeguards are in place."
Aelita narrowed her eyes, firing another Energy Field at the Creeper. This time, she succeeded.
"Did you hear me?" he demanded.
They all muttered yesses as Franz leaned back to check on their progress.
"Team Cake Knife," Odd said into his comms unit. "How are you guys holding up?"
"It's not a cake knife!" William shouted. "We're fine. We're outside the room with the supercomputer, but there's an access code to get in." He looked to Jeremie. "Any ideas?"
"Well," the boy started, "we don't have the proper equipment to hack in and disable the keypad." He started to fidget, turning his dagger over in his hand. "Waldo?"
Franz rolled his eyes at Jeremie's use of his real name. "I'm on it."
"Wait," William said. "Maybe this'll work."
The boy turned to smoke, easily slipping under the door. He was able to unlock it from the inside. Jeremie was flabbergasted.
"What if an alarm goes off?!" he protested. "What if—"
"Then we're going to have to hurry," William implored, already stationed at the main interface for the supercomputer. "Franz. We need that code. Now."
"A-alright." The man canceled the decrypting process and called up the scrambling device Jeremie had sent him earlier on. "This may take a minute. The supercomputer at The Met is already going through the data, so I just hope—" The process had finished. "Never mind, it's done. I'm sending it your way. You'll see a prompt on-screen for a program installation; hit accept and follow the instructions."
"Right." William stepped aside, gesturing for Jeremie to take over. "I'll stand guard out in the hall." A halo of black smoke covered his hand as he summoned his sword.
The blonde cracked his knuckles. "Okay, let's see what we're working with here…" He started typing rapidly, as the installation for the worm opened up a root folder for the inner-most workings of the mainframe. Every time they implanted this virus, it would seek out the strongest part of XANA's code and chip away at it until there was nothing left. "The more Replikas we can get to, the weaker XANA will be."
"And no one will notice it?" they heard Sissi ask.
"Precisely," he answered. "The program will be invisible to the naked eye; even the most tech-savvy person would really need to know what they're looking for to find it."
"Team Wings to Team Cake Knife," Yumi said over the comms unit. "We're finished here. We'll rendezvous with our team and head back to the hangar bay in Sector Five."
"If one more person calls my sword a cake knife…" William threatened jokingly. The rest of the group laughed at his expense.
Franz leaned back in his chair. Although he'd been against this whole idea from the start, he had to admit how refreshing it was to work with the kids. Maybe Anthea was right: He just needed to calm down a little; treat them as equals instead of the rebellious adolescents that they were.
However, this mission was almost too easy — it wasn't as if XANA would've expected them to attack at the source, but they hadn't run into nearly as much trouble as he'd anticipated.
He took a long drink from his flask as he watched the kids make their way through the network and back to the hangar bay unscathed. There was definitely a storm brewing — he could feel it. And he knew it was going to be big.
"Good work, everyone," Jeremie commended, once they were all back in the lab. "We were able to set Plan B into motion."
"I thought Plan B was last year's shut-down the Replika supercomputers," Ulrich said dryly.
"Okay, fine — this is Plan C." He paused. "And, with Saturday classes canceled for the remainder of the term, we'll have some extra time to keep at it."
Yumi checked her watch. "It's almost one in the morning!" She gathered her things in a hurry. "I have to get home — my parents are going to kill me!"
"I thought they stopped giving you the third degree when you told them you were in love," Ulrich reminded her. They all piled into the elevator.
"That doesn't change the fact that I still have a curfew."
Odd let out a laugh. "So? We do too, but you don't see us abiding by it!"
They continued the walk in silence. Once they reached the park, Yumi gave Ulrich a quick kiss before taking off in the direction of the school gates. "I'll see you guys tomorrow!"
Sissi checked her phone. "Oh, no! I have at least twenty missed notifications from my father!"
"Your watch didn't alert you to anything?" Jeremie asked.
"I had everything on Do Not Disturb," she explained. "And then we went to Lyoko… Ugh, I completely forgot he wanted to do something with me tonight!"
Jean-Pierre was already waiting for her when Sissi returned to her room. His presence startled her as she opened the door.
"Daddy!" she said, flashing a fake smile. "What a surprise!"
The man narrowed his eyes.
"We were at a movie," she explained, before he had time to ask.
"That's odd," he said in a low voice, starting to pace. "Mr. Pichon said he saw you get out of a black town car with Miss Stones and Miss De Luca, and that the three of you came back here. But that was hours ago."
She dropped her coat and bag to the floor.
"A movie, of all things!" he shouted, turning on her. "Now you're lying to me?! What has gotten into you, Sissi?"
"I…" She could feel her face turning bright red.
"I'm very disappointed in you," he continued. "You're gone for hours at a time, you don't answer your phone, you don't respond to messages — how am I supposed to know where you are and that you're safe?!"
"I'm fine," she spat. "Aelita and I went to Giana's grandparents' in Neuilly-sur-Seine. They'd invited us over for dessert. After that, we came back here and—"
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he demanded.
Her expression fell.
He let out a breath. "Well, at least you're here now. But you're grounded until Monday."
"Daddy—"
"That's final." He opened the door to leave. "Good night."
She sank to her knees, numb. In all the years of getting away with everything, Sissi had hardly dealt with any repercussions for her actions (except for that one time when she did poorly on the biology exam, but she'd snuck out anyway). Now, she had no choice: Either she complied with her father's terms to keep him at bay, or she could completely ignore him and join the others on the Replika missions.
"Sorry, Daddy Darling," she mumbled bitterly, changing into a pair of pajamas, "but saving the world is more important than respecting your wishes."
Giana was in the desert sector, alone. She spotted a neutral tower off in the distance and started running.
"Jeremie!" she called. "Jeremie! Can you send a vehicle?"
Silence.
"Jeremie?"
Monsters materialized, one after the other: First, it was a swarm of Hornets, shooting at her with their acid lasers. Right below them were a group of Kankrelats, followed by some Krabs, Tarantulas, Bloks, Megatanks, and even a few Creepers. XANA had sent the whole cavalry.
"JEREMIE!"
Still, no one answered.
"William! Aelita! Someone, answer me!"
She kept running, dodging the lasers, attempting to deflect them from behind with her staff. But even though she had the tower in sight, it wasn't getting any closer.
"The materialization safeguards are down," she heard Jeremie say. "Be careful — it's dangerous!"
"Jeremie!" She slowed her pace. "There you are! What the hell is going on?"
"The materialization safeguards are down," he repeated.
"But you just said—"
She stopped short, a laser whizzing right by the side of her face. She spun around to face the army of monsters, now having tripled in size.
"Jeremie, come on!" she pleaded. "This isn't funny! Bring me in!"
"The materialization safeguards are down…"
She had come to a break in the plateau; the tower was still dead ahead, but she had no way of accessing it. Aelita wasn't there to alter the terrain, and she had no vehicle.
She surrendered, dropping her weapon to the desert floor. It was at that exact moment that all of the monsters decided to shoot at once.
"NO!" the brunette shrieked, jolting upright in bed. Her alarm clock said it was after four in the morning, though she couldn't see it; her vision was blurred with tears.
The door flew open. "What is it?" she heard Sissi ask. Someone turned on a light. "What's wrong?"
She tried to answer, but she couldn't speak — she could barely breathe, for that matter. She vaguely felt her dog nudging her with her cold snout, to bring her back down to earth. But she just felt herself shaking, crying, pulling the blankets up around herself as she tried to respond, to make sense of the nightmare.
"I can't," she heard herself say. "I can't — I—"
"I think she's having a panic attack," Aelita said in a rush. She stalled, trying to recall what she'd read on the matter. "Um, we need to calm her down. We have to…"
They heard footsteps — someone was running down the girls' corridor.
Aelita felt helpless. "Who else would be up at this hour?"
William and Ulrich slid to a stop in front of the open door, both of them so flustered in their rush to get there that they tried to enter the room at the same time. They finally crashed to the floor. Vega let out a whimper.
"Sissi texted me," William explained, scrambling to his feet. He practically fell over himself again once he laid eyes on his girlfriend.
Ulrich shut and locked the door. "What the hell happened?"
"Why are you here?" Sissi demanded.
"I was coming back from the bathroom, actually," he shot back, "but then I saw him in a hurry. Nice to see you, too, by the way."
"Giana—" William sat down beside her and held her by the shoulders. "Say something."
"I can't go back to Lyoko!" she cried. "The safeguards are down! We'll get hurt again! We can't… I…" She was on the verge of hysterics.
"Look at me," the boy said softly. "Hey— Look at me."
She complied, barely, but it was enough for him to keep going.
"You're alright. It was just a nightmare."
"I don't want to go back as much as you do," Ulrich added. "But it's safe."
"Jeremie said my father was able to issue a permanent patch," Aelita explained, sitting on the floor between the boys. "We'll be okay." She paused. "You need to breathe."
No one noticed that Sissi had left and came back. "Here." She outstretched a hand holding a small, white pill. "It's an anti-anxiety med."
Ulrich arched an eyebrow. "Don't you have to have a prescription for those?"
"Will you shut up?" she spat. "This is an over-the-counter supplement!"
"Why are you being such a bitch?!"
"Both of you, stop it!" Aelita chastised. "If you can't be civil toward one another, you need to leave!"
"I think you should all go," William ordered. He still held Giana, who was slowly starting to calm down. "Thanks for the help, but it's late."
The trio stared at him.
"Go on," he continued. "Go back to bed while it's still dark."
They left, albeit begrudgingly. He got up to turn off the light. Vega stretched, curling back up into a ball on her bed.
William settled in beside the brunette. "You know, I think we could all use a break," he said in a half-whisper. "Jeremie can't force anyone into something they don't want to do."