It was around midnight when the Lyoko Warriors arrived at the abandoned building indicated by Jeremy's recording to be the server farm. They parked their vehicles far enough away to not draw attention. Before going in, Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi donned their new suits and grabbed their gear. By and large, their suits looked like their old upgraded Lyoko Suits. Aelita grabbed the cyberdeck and they all grabbed earpieces so they could communicate during the mission.
"Why am I still a big purple cat? At least I don't have the tail anymore, but still!" Odd complained.
Yumi smirked at Ulrich in his outfit, still vaguely resembling a samurai. "God, you really are such a weeb." She joked. Ulrich rolled his eyes.
"Hey, you should feel lucky that he is, otherwise he might not have fought so hard for his waifu." William joked. Ulrich was unimpressed. Yumi could see that something was off.
"What's wrong, Ulrich? You've been really quiet and moody today; you're not going back to your old self now, are you?" Yumi asked with a small smile.
"I'm fine." Ulrich stated flatly.
"You know you can talk to me." Yumi gently replied.
"I said I'm fine. Let's just focus on the mission here, then we can worry about me." Ulrich tested his blade out as he curtly responded to Yumi's concern.
Odd cut in. "Don't worry Yumi, he's just upset he only caught the aftermath of me rocking Sissi's world." As he said it, he made a thrusting motion for effect. The rest of group responded with some combo of grimacing, shaking their heads and/or shuddering.
The five of them, now prepared, entered the building. The door was locked but William's skill with a lockpick made short work of that. There was still emergency power running but otherwise there was no indication of recent activity, in fact there was a visible level of dust on just about everything. On the wall, there was a map of the facility. Not too far from the entrance, there was a security room, perfect for Aelita to set up her equipment. At the far end of the facility on the second floor was restricted access, the most likely spot where they would find the information that they needed. Downstairs there was a generator. They first headed in the direction of the security room. The door was locked, with no visible nob. Aelita took out the cyberdeck and attempted to access the door's electronic lock.
"No good. We need the main generator online." Aelita sighed.
"Not a problem, Princess, we'll get the power back online!" Odd declared. "Come on Ulrich. William and Yumi can watch Aelita's back and meet up with us once she's safe in the security room." Odd and Ulrich ran off in the direction of the generator. Once they were out of earshot, Odd chastised Ulrich.
"What the hell is your problem?" Odd opened with, irritated.
"You know exactly what my problem is." Ulrich whined.
"Get over it, are you really going to throw away the girl of your dreams over something so petty?" Odd shot back.
"I'm not sure how I feel about her anymore." Sighed Ulrich.
"Oh please, she's the same Yumi you spent years pining over. What you need is something to remind you how much you really care about her, something stronger than your neuroses." Odd laughed.
The two walked down the stairs to the generator room. The door was unlocked. Odd and Ulrich switched on their earpieces and entered the room. With some minor fumbling, they were able to find a breaker. They gave it a flip and the lights in the power room came to life with a blinding fury.
" That do anything?" Ulrich asked over the earpiece's microphone.
Aelita's voice responded back. "Yes, thank you. You two should head toward the restricted access, William and Yumi are heading that way now." There was the slight sound of shuffling and movement from her mic, and then after a brief moment of silence, Aelita continued. "I am able to track your progress through the camera system here; Jeremy's electronic masking function works perfectly. There don't appear any guards in this building, but there do appear to be some dormant security devices, some turrets, …but the cyberdeck doesn't really provide the proper input device for… hmmm…."
"Aelita?" Odd asked over the line.
"Oh nothing, just an idea for later. Just get to the restricted access as soon as you can so we can get out of here."
"Are you going to be safe all by yourself?" Ulrich asked
"Sure, I electronically locked the door behind me once I entered and changed the codes. Nobody is going to be able to enter unless I let them. Now hurry up."
With that, Ulrich and Odd ran off in the direction of the restricted access room. It didn't take long for them to catch up with William and Yumi. With no visible threats, they arrived at the door to the restricted access. As they approached, the door's electronic lock beeped, signifying that it unlocked. Aelita spoke over the coms.
"I unlocked the door for you, I ran a search for all data related to Carthage, my dad, and other related terms. The search is still running, but there should be a promising lead on a drive in the server in the far-left corner of the room."
Ulrich and William entered the server room, while Odd and Yumi covered the door. Ulrich approached the indicated server.
"Ok, Aelita which drive?" Ulrich asked
"It's Letters J and K, so grab the eighth and ninth from the top." Aelita replied.
Ulrich pulled the first drive, and an alarm began blaring.
"Damn it. I thought I cut all the alarms. Sorry, this is my first top-secret government network I've hacked into. I typically have a husband who does this sort of thing." Aelita sighed.
The security system sprang to life and a squad of automatic armed drones flew in the direction of restricted access. Odd and Yumi prepared to give their new weapons a field test.
Ulrich wasn't frozen in place. "Do I take the other drive?"
"Yes! Get the other drive." Aelita sounded impatient. "I'm trying to turn off the security system on my end, but it might be best if you….wait…" Aelita paused
"What?" Ulrich was getting bit uneasy.
Aelita continued. "In the other corner, second server from the wall, pull the fourth drive from the top."
"Alright." Ulrich pulled the second drive from the first server then headed over to the second server.
Outside the room, the drones had reached the hall in front of restricted access and began firing machine guns at Yum and Odd. Dodging the bullets, Yumi chucked one of her discs at a drone. The drone crashed to the floor broken.
"Nice one Yumi but let me show you how it's done." Odd then fired a dart at a drone. The drone spun out of control and took two others with it to the ground.
"Oh yeah, who's the man? I still got it after all these years. There's nothing…." Odd's celebration was cut short by the drones repairing themselves and resuming their attack.
"Uh, Aelita? The drones can fix themselves?" Odd remarked
"What? That doesn't make any sense…wait, try your goggles. Switch them to AR mode and tell me what you see."
Odd complied. "Wow, it's like there's a virtual world all around us. I can see the real world, but it's got more that I couldn't see before like…wait, what's that?"
"What do you see?" asked Aelita.
"It's like…a little gremlin next to the drones."
Aelita was getting a little impatient. "Good. Shoot the gremlin!"
Odd instinctively shot a dart in the direction of the gremlin. The motion fired a virtual projectile at the digital creature, killing it and shutting down the nearby drones but it also fired a thermal dart at a server, making it explode.
"Oops." Odd took off his goggles.
Ulrich and William ran out of the server room, all three drives in hand.
"Let's get the hell out of here before anything else shows up." William articulated.
Almost as if on cue, the front door to the building burst open and soldiers began swarming out. Aelita quickly switched off the security system and hid below sight in the security office. The rest of the Lyoko Warriors readied themselves for a fight. An explosion was heard outside and the soldiers suddenly took up defensive positions facing the exit. A crossfire began between the soldiers in the building and a third party outside. Ulrich, William, Odd and Yumi quietly made their way to the security office where Aelita was hiding. When they reached the security office, Aelita emerged.
"There's a rear exit just down the hall, if we're quiet, we can slip by without any of them noticing" Aelita whispered.
"Who are these people?" Yumi asked.
Aelita shook her head. "We can worry about that later."
Being as quiet as possible, the Lyoko Warriors made a hasty retreat to the back exit to the building. Fortune was on their side, any noise they could have made was covered up effectively by the miniature war that was occurring within their vicinity. Once out of the building they made their way to their vehicles, but not before identifying one of the groups involved in this skirmish. As the approached the edge of the previously abandoned compound they discovered one of the casualties. He was a guerilla wearing the insignia of L'albatros.
EXCERPT FROM THE DIARY OF JEREMY BELPOIS
DATED THE NIGHT OF FRANZ HOPPER'S DEATH
XANA is defeated, but victory came with a high cost. I keep thinking there must have been something else I could have done. Franz Hopper, Aelita's dad, is dead, and I can't help but think that it's my fault. It was my multi-agent system, could I have found another solution? Worse, does Aelita secretly blame me? I can't bear the thought.
Aelita is asleep now. We took her back to the hermitage. The others have all left so it's just the two of us now. For the past hour, I held her close and promised that no matter what happens, I will always be there for her. I would always protect her; I would never let anything like this happen to her again. In the heat of the moment, I stupidly confessed that I loved her. I immediately began to regret it, but she just hugged tighter as she sobbed. After some time, she finally responded. She told me that she loves me too, and she made me promise again that I would never leave her. How could such a thing ever be considered? She is my whole world and has been for two years now. I don't see that changing.
The death of Franz Hopper is more significant than just Aelita's father dying. Not to be insensitive, but for the longest time he was an almost mythical being. The "god" of Lyoko, even the form he took, as it was described to me, bring to mind an "Old Testament" image. With his death, the world has lost a great visionary and …I've killed my idol, the man I looked up to far more than my own father. Did I actually want him to come back? Deep down, did I fear that if he came back, I could lose Aelita? What if he didn't approve of Aelita and I going out? What if he moved away with her and I would never see her again? Aelita looks to me to provide for her, she looks to me for approval, I fill the void left by him…did I purposefully do this? Or did I do it because I wanted to be the sole inheritor of his work? No one, not even Aelita, understood how he thought to the same degree that I did. Or was it simply my incompetence that killed him? If I had been more careful in my coding, if I had spent more time on the program…could things have turned out differently? I'm not sure which possibility is worse: that I am incompetent or a monster. Surely, there had to have been another way to defeat XANA; one that would give Aelita her father back. The guilt is overwhelming, I've got to think about something else.
I suppose tomorrow we will shut down the supercomputer. I can't help but wonder if we will all stick together without Lyoko. I'm not worried about me and Aelita, not now, but what exactly do I have in common with Odd and Ulrich? Why would they want to stay friends with someone like me? There's a lot on my mind tonight, but I might try and get some sleep too, it feels like years since I have. God, it's strange to think it's finally over, it's almost like part of me died along with Franz and XANA.