Chapter 29

Aélita leaned her head against Jérémie's shoulder, fatigue setting in as she sat beside Jérémie on his parent's bed. She had been trying to help him take the data they had collected from the world her mother was being held in to learn more about it. So far it looked like a version of Lyoko with a few improvements, mostly being in the code. It was getting frustrating to think they were so close to activating a tower in that world only to be forced to come up with something new. The afternoon had been spent explaining to Béa and Grandmére how Lyoko worked so they could help. Now Michel sat behind his wife, him leaning against the pillows as his wife sat in his lap typing away on her laptop, so he could watch her work.

It struck Aélita as sweet for how long those two had been married and to still be happy just snuggling like that.

She turned her eyes to Grandmére, the elder woman sitting on her cot as she looked down at the desktop still on the floor. The keyboard rested in her lap as she clicked away at the mouse sitting beside her. Aélita looked back at Jérémie's laptop only to be caught off guard as a yawn escaped her. She covered her mouth only as the tail end of the yawn left. Jérémie turned his head to her, getting her to mumbled, "Sorry."

"Are you tired?" Jérémie asked.

"A bit," Aélita admitted, glancing at the bottom of his screen to see it was only a little passed seven. "But I wanna help."

"Aélita, you're still recovering," Jérémie pointed out.

"I'll go to bed at eight, okay?" Aélita offered, smiling at him.

Jérémie gave her a pout before turning back to his work. "Okay."

Aélita snuggled the side of her head into Jérémie's shoulder, feeling him stiffen for a moment before going back to typing in code.

"Aélita?" Béa asked, getting the girl to sit up so she could look at Jérémie's mom. "Can you double check this for me?"

"Yeah," Aélita nodded her head as she scooted away from Jérémie's side. Béa leaned forward to pass her laptop. Taking it, Aélita leaned against Jérémie's back as she sat the device in her crossed legs. She scrolled to the top to see Béa's work on creating Xana's level of encryption.

It hit Aélita of the irony, learning form their enemy. But when your enemy can teach you things to use against him, and now against the French government, why not?

"Do you two work with this level of encryption a lot?" Béa asked as Aélita focused on the work before her.

"Not at this level," Aélita admitted, realizing the work was waking her up. She ran an equation in her head, double checking Béa's figures, before saying, "Normally we work with something similar to PointSec, with that being what-"

"What most governments use, I'm familiar with it," Béa offered.

"The DRM sure know what they're up against," Jérémie added as another error sounded from his computer. He let out a sound of aggravation as keystrokes fired off.

"We've never had to break into a world like this," Aélita admitted, keeping her eyes to checking Béa's work. "With Xana's replicas of Lyoko, he forgot to take out the access the key in my program gives us. But since this world wasn't created by Daddy, my key doesn't work." She scrolled down to the bottom of the window as she finished checking her work. She leaned forward and offered back the laptop saying, "Everything looks right."

Béa took the laptop, replacing it on her lap, and asked, "Mom, you ready for the encryption codes?"

"Sent it over," Grandmére said.

Aélita moved again, folding her legs under her as she went back to leaning her head on Jérémie's shoulder as he finished with the tower activation program. She saw a few extra steps he had to preform, hoping they could at least create a stable link between his computer and her mother's world. She knew all this was just to establish a line of communication that the DRM couldn't hear. And hopefully with all the precautions they were taking, they wouldn't be cut off quickly. She just wanted long enough to talk to her mom.

She opened her eyes, thinking she had only blinked with she realized Jérémie was almost done. He was typing up the last line now. She sat up, rubbing the side of her face to get rid of Jérémie's shirt seam lines she was sure to be imprinted there as Jérémie loudly pressed enter. Watching the screen, the lines of data were quickly read and tested before a green circle appeared. "It works!" Aélita exclaimed, giving Jérémie a hug.

"It works?" Grandmére asked, looking up at Jérémie from her screen. "Well send it over so we can try and get all this running."

Jérémie did as asked, sending a copy of the code he had worked so long on to Grandmére's desktop before letting out a sigh.

"What'd the message you send with it say?" Aélita asked, just realizing she missed when he had added it.

Jérémie looked down at his laptop and scrolled to about the middle of the code for Aélita to read for herself.

"Anthea Hopper, we are friends of your husband Franz. He is still alive and so is your daughter," Aélita read aloud. "We are activating this tower to give us a form of communication. Please respond."

"I figured stay professional, since she doesn't know me," Jérémie explained.

"And if she responds in the middle of the night, we should wake up to this thing going off," Grandmére said as she typed away. She hit one last key with flare as she said, "There we go! Tower should be activated any moment now." Just as she closed her mouth the desktop gave off a loud ping. "Success!" She looked up and announced, "Tower is activated. Now we just sit and wait."

Jérémie closed his laptop and sat it on the bed in front of him as he said, "And you're going to bed."

Aélita let out a halfhearted growl as he moved so she couldn't use him to lean on. "Alright, but wake me up when she responds," Aélita said, moving herself off the bed.

"Don't worry, we will," Béa said.

Aélita smiled at the woman before saying, "Good night." She heard the adults respond back as she walked out of the room only to find Jérémie following her. Out in the hall she turned to look at him as she said with a laugh, "I've gotta get changed."

"I know, sorry," Jérémie said, his cheeks turning red as he stopped on the stair landing looking at the floor. Aélita stopped a pace in front of him and turned around, sensing he wanted to say something. "Aélita, I…" his voice fell away as he looked up at her, his glasses falling a bit down his nose so he looked over them at her. He grabbed her hands in his and leaned close, planting a kiss on her forehead.

Aélita squeezed his hands and smiled at him. "I love you too," she said.

AN: They're so cute together! Awww!

ODD: It's not fair.

AN: What?

ODD: Well Jérémie has Aeltia, Ulrich has Yumi, if they'd actually admit it and start dating, but no one stays with me for long!

AN: You've got me.

ODD: You're a creep.

AN: So are you. Anyway, you still have plenty of time to find someone who loves you for your weirdness. The one thing I did like that they added to Code Lyoko Evolution (in the books first!) was the triangle of sorts between Aélita, Jérémie, and the new girl. Though I couldn't tell how much Jérémie actually liked her. But how many times, in real life, do you marry the boy/girlfriend you had back in 9th grade? That would've meant I would've married that country hick of a red-neck who's now in jail! And most-likely there cause he couldn't pay for child support.

ODD: The red-head? The one with the acne problem worst then Hervé?

AN: Yeah, him.

ODD: Cat was always telling you to get a French boyfriend while you dated him.

AN: My point is, sure, some people do marry their first love, but wouldn't they look around when they could? Take Ulrich and Yumi. They both could be really popular and have all the attention they wanted if they actually wanted that. Ulrich kinda has it even if he doesn't want it. I think they would date a few months before something splits them up, before getting back together once Yumi's in 12th grade.

ODD: You've got this all worked out, don't you?

AN: Well, I do have a story that takes place after this one ten years later. What's funny, I originally wrote that back in 2010 to take place in 2016. What was once written to be in the future is now being re-written to be in the past.

ODD: So what's our futures?

AN: Why would I tell you that?

ODD: Come on, you can tell me.

AN: Nope.