"Who is this new enemy who has appeared in addition to X.A.N.A., really?" Mary wondered aloud while walking. Something hit her back and struck her to the ground harder than any monster's laser.
"What the hec...?" Mary asked while getting up and stopped mid-sentence after turning around. It was that new enemy. Without thinking about anything else than her own survival – which the previous strike had just made more difficult by decreasing her life points – Mary started to toss fireballs at them. However, something in that opponent bothered Mary so that none of the ten fireballs she threw hit their target. One left a mark on the tree it grazed.
"You're weak. Just like your friend," the enemy said.
"What? You don't know me! Who do you think you are?!" Mary snapped. When she did not get an answer, Mary observed her target. They were a black-haired boy, a bit taller than her. They could not have much age difference. Now she understood what in that boy bothered: he looked familiar. Too familiar. It could not be the same person, Mary did not want to believe it.
"Do you remember a friend of yours, William? The one you were with when the guy possessed by X.A.N.A. kidnapped you?" the boy asked.
"Not really thanks to X.A.N.A.," Mary noted coldly. What game is this? Deep inside she prayed that this boy would not be the same person.
"Well, now he is in front of you. Him you saw at the Core Chamber, destroying the Core of Lyoko. Him you tried to save that day. Him you have already seen a few times fighting against the Lyoko Warriors. And all of it he did of his own free will. He is on my side," X.A.N.A. itself answered.

Blood ran cold in Mary's virtual veins. All that she had feared seemed to have come true now. She did not want it to be true but she felt the coldness inside her. This was real.
"No," Mary said, numb. "William would've never done so of his free will. Never." She took a deep breath and loaded all the trust in the friend she had not seen for years, a friend who could be something completely else nowadays from her heart. She let all of that trust loose and shouted, "You forced him to it, X.A.N.A., I know it! William would've never, ever, ever done so of his own will, ever!"
"You know that X.A.N.A. is telling the truth," the William possessed by X.A.N.A. replied.
"You get lost with your lies!" Mary shouted and threw a fireball, which hit its target for once. It catapulted William to his back.

Without waiting for the reaction of the friend she had lost, Mary fled, ran away crying. She stepped into a tower, falling into the data tunnel right away and ran out of the Ice Sector's tower. She ran a bit further but stopped upon seeing that a Scyphozoa waited for her. Mary threw a powerful fireball right away to destroy that monster. The Scyphozoa came apart from the power of the hit it had gotten.

Mary sunk on her knees, crying uncontrollably.
"Why did this have to go like this? Why?" she asked herself when the crying allowed her to talk. Upon hearing and feeling the rumble caused by the coming of Megatanks, she got back up on her feet and ran back to the Way Tower, eyes blurry. The semicircular lasers followed her all the way to the Way Tower where she fell into the data tunnel while the tower swung.

Mary collapsed on her side on the platform of the Forest Sector's Way Tower. Suddenly, everything felt extremely bad, so she decided to stay still. When no one came to threaten her life and she did not have the energy to move, all the memories X.A.N.A. had locked away a long time ago avalanched back.

Suddenly she remembered everything again. Once again she remembered clearly the young William's joyous grin. The grin which had now twisted into malicious.

The knowledge about her friend having twisted all the way into a henchman of X.A.N.A. hurt the most. Mary could not help crying both out of sorrow and a growing anger.
"William, I promise to do all in my power to rescue you from X.A.N.A.'s claws," Mary promised quietly.

Suddenly and completely without a permission, a familiar voice invaded her tower and said without regard for her agony, "Mary, you're already late from the PE class!"
"What?!" Mary cried out while startling awake from her painful limbo. The dark shades of the tower turned into light colors at the same time.
"Calm down, Mary. It's Sunday. No school," the same voice said. Mary sat up, turned to look at the talker and noticed that it was William. Then she understood that she was on Earth in her own room – and what she had just seen and felt had been just a dream. "Nothing lighter couldn't get you awake. I've been trying to wake you up for probably the last ten minutes."
"Thank god it wasn't real," Mary breathed and pressed her face into her palms.

She realized all of a sudden that there were tears on her face. She tried to wipe them away surreptitiously but William noticed it nevertheless. On the other hand, he had seen his friend crying in her sleep, so he did know of those tears which Mary tried to hide from him.

William sat down next to her. "I guess you saw a really bad dream."

Mary looked at him, trying to play confused.
"Don't bother trying to hide it. I did see your tears," William noted. Mary looked away. "Mary, if you don't want to talk about your dream, that's perfectly ok, but don't act like I'd be blind."
"I'm sorry," Mary apologized.
"It's ok," William said. "Is everything alright? According to Sophie, you've slept all night soundly and didn't even wake up to her shout at night."
"I'm just tired because of yesterday's aftermath," Mary noted, "and probably sleep deprivation. I've had nightmares. This was probably the worst. It felt so bad."
"Do you want to tell me anything about it?" William asked.
"No," Mary answered. She did not want to bother her friend with her nightmares inspired by Lyoko's worst era. "It doesn't matter. It was just an incoherent nightmare."
"Very well," William said.
"You said that Sophie shouted here at night. What happened?" Mary changed the topic.
"A nightmare," William replied.
"About yesterday?"
"Yeah."

/Code Lyoko (c) Moonscoop, Lyokostar story series and its original characters (c) Me/