"Then what's the story?!" Jeremie asked. Franz continued to sit in silence for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Perhaps it was a bit too long, because the rest of them were staring at him strangely. Again, he couldn't really keep track of time, anymore.

"I...made a deal with the devil. Metaphorically, of course." Franz shuddered, calling the memory to mind. "There was a corrupt government group that I was a part of, yes. And I knew it was corrupt...how could I not...intercepting and manipulating signals, new forms of warfare and assassination, trapping the consciousness and leaving the body open for control. Everything was control, control, control. But the money kept coming and the work was so intellectually challenging, and so fulfilling when you finally got something to work..." He trailed off.

"I did eventually take a stand. I commandeered two artificial intelligence experiments inside one of the project's supercomputers, the one in the Renault factory."

"So you didn't build the Supercomputer or Lyoko?" Jeremie asked.

"I helped to build several supercomputers. You didn't think I could build a supercomputer all by myself, did you?" Franz raised an eyebrow.

"But your video diary..." Jeremie trailed off.

"Video diary? I made no such thing. More trickery." Franz shook his head. "I would be a fool to have a filmed confession available. I'd practically be asking to be caught."

Jeremie frowned. He had a video diary he made inspired by Franz Hopper's video diary...though it was true that Sissi had found the Supercomputer at one point and watched the diary. They had to do a final return to the past that day. Would they have to do more now? He supposed leaving videos wasn't the best idea but...he wanted a record, he wanted to remember how he felt and what happened. Since nobody else would remember...it was kind of like a proof of life. But yeah it could get them in trouble.

"Commandeered two Artificial intelligences? And one of them was me?" Aelita prompted, no discernable emotion in her voice.

"Well, yes." Franz said. "Or rather, one of them became you. Theseus's Ship and all that...And the other became Xana. I specialized Xana to be my weapon against them, and you as the Supercomputer's guardian. It never even crossed my mind to try to reverse the virtualization process for a being that didn't have a body to begin with..." He trailed off, studying Aelita intently for a long time. "You've done something quite remarkable."

"Uh...th-thank you, sir." Jeremie stammered. This was high praise, even though this wasn't exactly the man he had looked up to all these years. Aelita stood up suddenly, swaying a little from the motion of the train.

"Aelita?" Yumi asked.

"I can't be here right now. I can't just sit here while you talk about me like that." She walked down the aisle and into the next car.

Simon and Felix were exhausted. Seriously, they were struggling to keep their eyes open, and it was partially because they were hungry and dehydrated. In the whirlwind of Uberland fun they had forgotten to take care of themselves. But that was easily remedied.

"Ready to go home?" Simon asked.

"Yeah..." Felix muttered drowsily. Simon looked at the disc in his hands which could teleport them anywhere in the world. He felt sort of bad for leaving Ulrich and his friends in France, but they were going to go home so they wouldn't get in trouble, then call Ulrich with their home phone to see where they were. Then they could just teleport everyone back and apologize and everything would be fine. Right? He held up the device and took in a deep breath.

And someone grabbed his arm. And someone covered his mouth. And he was gone.

Aelita sat amongst other commuters, going to their jobs or their families or coming back...she had never felt so alone and empty. Nobody came to meet her this time, to try and get her to come back. She was glad. She needed to be alone. It wasn't like she could actually get away anyways. They were on a train. They were all going to the same destination in Germany. Unless she got off an earlier stop...

No, no, that would be stupid and rash of her. She just needed some time to think. To think and to be in her body.

Her body...was human, flesh and blood. Aelita looked down at her hand and slowly wiggled her fingers, watching and feeling her bones move underneath her skin. She saw her faint blue veins branching throughout.

She still had had trouble believing she was really and truly human...that her memory of life on Earth had been erased. Well, that was because it hadn't...her memories of being on Earth had been a fabrication. Or...was Franz Hopper coming and saying this more trickery...more fabrication...one could follow this trail of paranoia forever. She was going to paralyze herself with this if she wasn't careful.

But...did the human part really matter as much as she was thinking it did? Even if she had started out as an AI, she lived and...and loved, and made mistakes and made stupid emotional decisions. She took care of others and sacrificed for them. What was the threshold of humanity. If an AI...if she was in fact originally an AI...had a body like a human, acted like a human, had memories telling it that it was a human...was there really any difference.

Or was there an insurmountable difference.

The train stopped, and the doors slid open. The last stop in France. None of her friends were around. She could get off and blend into the crowd and...she didn't know, run away? She could stop being a part of this. Maybe she could find another life that wasn't...this, that wasn't such a rollercoaster. She would be abandoning her friends, but...No, no...As tempting as that was...this wasn't the way to deal with things.

The doors closed once again, and the train rolled out.