Ok, sorry about this people, I wasn't able to modify it in the normal program so I don't know how it will turn out.
Also this is the saddest chapter that I have written, and probably the longest. So, uh, enjoy.

Wack! I woke up with a start and looked around me. The other kids in the room were laughing, I could only assume at me. It wasn't like it was the first time I had fallen asleep in class, and I doubted that it would be the last. I looked around, seeing Jeremie, and Ulrich waking up as well, and finally looked at the teacher.

"Well, Odd, would you like to explain yourself?" she asked irritated.

So this must be science... good, then it will be easy to make up an excuse, and make it funny at the same time. I quickly glanced at the board and saw something that I took to say alpha. My mind racing back I remembered that during a previous X.A.N.A. attack Jeremie had explained to us that alpha brain waves were the sleeping brain waves, or something like that anyway...

"Well, all this talk about sleep made me sleepy..." I said and waited, but no laughter followed.

I quickly glanced at Ulrich and then over to Jeremie. Jeremie was holding up his hand to his head and shaking them miserably. I looked at the board and saw that I had misinterpreted what I had seen. It hadn't been the word 'alpha' but rather the symbol in some long equation that began to make me dizzy just looking at it.

"Oh, I must have been confused." I said trying again. "That made me sleepy..." I pointed to the board and pretended to nod off again.

"Well, if it bores you so much, why don't you explain it to us?" Ms. Hertz asked.

"Uh..." I said helplessly.

Now I was in trouble. There was no way that I would be able to explain all of what was on the board. I didn't even know what it was about. Desperately I searched for a title or something that would help me, but there was just the equation.

"Now Mr. Della-Robbia." Ms. Hertz demanded.

Mournfully I walked up to the board and looked at the class, my subjects of misery... now at least. I remembered how many times I had made them laugh, thinking of each one as a precious memory. Then I looked at Sissi and saw the smug look on her face. She was enjoying this. I knew she was enjoying watching me squirm in front of everyone.

Slowly I turned around and looked at the monster of an equation. I looked it over once, desperately trying to figure out what it might be and I reached the end. Then, trying it again, I started at the beginning and suddenly felt the room drop away. Everything changed slightly more purple and just a little crooked, as though I was looking through a bad pair of binoculars. Realizing that I must be having a vision of some kind, as I had many times in the past, I became a little more attentive.

As I watched I noticed that I was looking at a piece of paper. On the paper was the equation that I was supposed to be working on right now. A hand appeared with a pencil on it and began working on the equation in front of me. I watched wondering what good this would do me, I would probably forget how to do it again when it finished and I really had to do the problem. I continued to watch until it ended and I felt myself drop back into my body. Now the hard work would begin, but as I looked at the board I suddenly realized that everything that I had watched the hands in the vision do I had done myself.

Shocked I turned around and looked at my subjects. Their jaws were dropped and hanging open, but as I looked around to Sissi to see if she still had the smug grin on he face I got another shock. She was still grinning, but it wasn't smug. It was less of an evil grin, kinder, gentler, even, friendly... No, I quickly shook the thought out of my head, bowed and went back to my seat.

When I got there Ulrich looked at me in a funny way but said nothing. I glanced over to Jeremie and saw that he was scribbling madly on a piece of paper, probably checking my work... but the greatest part was the look on Ms. Hertz face. She was astounded. I had never seen her look so shocked, and when she recovered enough to move she walked up to the board and looked the equation over. I suddenly began to hope that I hadn't made any errors in my blind mathematical spark of genius.

Suddenly she turned around and looked at me intently. Now I've done it... I thought to myself.

"Chalk" she said simply.

I looked down at my hands and saw that I was still holding the chalk from the board. I smiled slightly and handed it to her. When they realized what had happened everyone laughed. Everything was right again...

---

Class had ended and we were getting out of class. Everyone was shocked at Odd's spark of genius, especially Jeremie. He had continued to try and work out the problem all of class but had continued to miss something. One of the most surprising things, other than Jeremie's failure, was how fast Odd had done the problem. It had given him a real excuse for falling asleep in class, and, fortunately for Jeremie and I, had made everyone else forget that we had as well. And that was the strange thing, why had we all fallen asleep at the same time?

"Ok, Odd, how did you do it?" Jeremie finally asked as we neared a door.

"I just did it." He said, and then laughed. "I guess that makes me the genius now, doesn't it, Einstein?"

"Yeah, when the cube root of negative nine equals pi." Jeremie replied.

Odd stopped and stared at Jeremie for a moment thinking. Then he laughed and said, "Oh, I get it."

"Sure Odd, sure." Jeremie retorted.

We passed through the door into the courtyard and were suddenly ambushed by Sissi. I looked around for Nicolas or Herb but they were no where to be seen. This was strange, Sissi never hung around without her too goons. I began to wonder what this meant, perhaps she had somehow decided to change and become a decent person... and maybe Odd really was smarter than Jeremie. Both were unlikely and I knew it. Sissi had probably just gotten tired of her only friends and had decided to ditch them.

"Excuse me Ulrich." Sissi said approaching me. "May I please speak to you?"

"About what?" I asked skeptically.

"Um, I would rather talk to you alone." She replied glancing at Jeremie and Odd. "Please."

"Maybe later." I said.

"Yeah, when you grow a neuron or two." Odd said and started laughing at his joke.

"Ha, ha, I haven't heard that one before." Sissi replied calmly to Odd, and then looked at me again. "Please, Ulrich, I need to ask you something."

This was beginning to get very strange. Normally if Odd made a joke like that she would have gotten exasperated, made a rude comment back, and left. Instead she took it calmly, made a sarcastic comment, and continued trying. Something must have been going on for her to act so differently. Perhaps Odd was... no, not possible.

"Ok, Sissi, later." I repeated calmly, and without any sarcasm in my voice.

That shocked all of them, but Sissi recovered first. "You promise?" she asked.

"As long as you don't call me 'dear'." I replied.

"Thank you, Ulrich." She said and walked off.

Now the others recovered from the shock and they both looked me over carefully. I could tell by the look on Odd's face that he was about to make a comment, and the look on Jeremie's face that he thought something was wrong with me. I was just glad that Yumi hadn't been there; that would have been bad...

"Ok, X.A.N.A. what have you done with the real Ulrich?" Odd asked, but somehow he sounded serious.

"Somehow I am inclined to agree with Odd this time, Ulrich. There is no way that you would have done what you just did without something being out of place..."

"Yeah, and it was Sissi. She was acting differently, not so much of an arrogant... um, well, how she usually acts." I told them. "This time, somehow, she was acting more like... a... um..."

"Human?" Yumi finished my sentence for me.

I jumped. I hadn't heard her coming up behind me. This is bad, how much had she heard? What would she think? Quickly I turned around to see what expression she had on her face and, to my relief, she was smiling.

"How long have you been there?" I asked.

"I had been waiting next to the door for the three of you." she replied calmly. "So I heard all of it." Then she must have realized how I felt because she added, "Don't worry, I agree with you, Ulrich. There is something different about her."

I sighed in relief. So Yumi wasn't angry with me; that was good. But even better, she agreed with me. Now I wouldn't have to lie... that was always a good thing. But there was still the matter of...

"Don't worry, I don't mind." She replied before I could say anything. "But I also need to talk with you, all of you." she said. "And that included Aelita."

"Yeah, something's going on here." Odd said.

"Oh, does this mean you all remember?" Jeremie asked in excitement.

"Remember what?" I asked.

"What happened before we woke up." He said as though it was obvious.

"So you three were caught asleep as well?" Yumi asked.

"Yeah, but don't you remember what happened before?"

As a matter of fact I didn't. I couldn't remember anything before I woke up. It was like my memory had been erased, or something. It was simply a blank to me, and it wasn't like I had stayed up late last night either. And unless the school's food or water was drugged that possibility was out...

"What did happen before?" Odd asked curiously.

"Uh-" but he stopped himself. "No, maybe I shouldn't tell. Never mind, it was only a dream." He dismissed the thought. "Anyway, let's go talk to Aelita, right Yumi?"

When we reached Jeremie's room we sat down and waited for Jeremie to contact Lyoko. Most of the dorm rooms in Kadic Junior High were built for two students to sleep in. There really was only enough room for beds and a desk at the bottom of the beds. When he had first come to this school he had roomed with someone, they had become friends almost immediately. The other kid was as much of a genius as Jeremie was, and when Jeremie found Lyoko and Aelita they both started trying to help Aelita. At first, when they discovered the factory, the other kid and Jeremie would trade off who went in and who did the scanning process. That was before Odd or I had come to the school, and before Yumi had joined the gang. It was also before the factory was forever changed...

"Ok, I have a link." Jeremie announced as a window appeared with Aelita's face in it.

"Hello everyone," Aelita said in her usual shy kindness. "How is everything on earth?"

"Well, that's the thing;" Jeremie replied. "Some of us are noticing some strange things. Have you been feeling any pulsations?" then his face seemed to change suddenly. He looked as though he wanted to ask something but couldn't find the right words for it. "Uh, do... no, never mind."

"I haven't felt any pulsations recently, though there were some reverberations, or a resonance just under an hour ago." Aelita said. "It was as though something in Lyoko had suddenly changed, something big."

"I-" But he stopped again and said, "Yumi had something she wanted to tell us, and she wanted you to hear it as well."

"Yes," Yumi agreed. "It was very strange. I had fallen asleep and my teacher woke me up, but before I was woken I had this very strange dream."

Yumi told us her dream, about the city having been destroyed, and sensing death at the end. Somehow I felt as though I had heard it before, but I decided no to say anything. When she finished telling it she asked the simple and straightforward question, "Is there any way that X.A.N.A. could have an effect like that again?"

"No," Aelita said, appearing to be a little disturbed. "Not unless he somehow managed to release Xanadu. That was the only machine that had enough power to affect your world in that way."

"But didn't we destroy Xanadu?" Odd asked alarmed. "I mean, a life was..."

Everyone grew quiet. It was then, that X.A.N.A. attack, back near the beginning, when the first and currently only death had happened. It had been very hard on us at the time, we all lost a very good friend then, but it had affected Jeremie the most. But in return for the death X.A.N.A. had been weakened so much that he would never be able to cause mass destruction again. The Xanadu program had been destroyed along with its attached machine, or so we had thought.

"No, Odd, Xanadu was not destroyed, it merely became dormant. That part of Lyoko has been locked ever since the incident." Aelita told him. "And, unfortunately, it can be awoken."

"If it was somehow awoken wouldn't our powers begin to accelerate again?" I asked remembering what it was like back then.

Back before the factory changed to what it was now, and when the Xanadu was still active, our powers, or rather abilities, had been accelerated. Each one of us had one or more ability that was so rare among humans that they were either considered gifts or curses. Yumi had a telepathic and telekinetic ability, Odd had an ability to have premonitions and to see things that were happening in places that were not anywhere near him, but Jeremie's and my abilities were more illusive. Even though I had an ability to move quickly and split myself into more than one person in Lyoko I did not have the same ability on earth. I did have agility but it wasn't the same. And none of really knew what Jeremie's ability was.

"I don't really know." Aelita said. "But it's a possibility. The Xanadu device had been active for a long time before we managed to shut it down. I honestly don't really know how long, but I think it would take it a long time to take that kind of effect again."

"Then why are our powers becoming active again?" Odd blurted out.

We all stared at him, startled at his sudden outburst. It wasn't like Odd didn't frequently do things like this, but it was what he said that had startled us. Yumi having a vision of some kind didn't mean our powers were reawakening. Her abilities had always been awake to an extent, so why would this be any different? Unless...

"Odd, is there something you aren't telling us?" I asked.

"Uh, well, you see..." he stammered trying to avoid our gaze. "Yes," he sighed. "The only way that I was able to solve that equation that Ms. Hertz had on the board was because I saw it happening in front of me. It was like having a premonition except it seemed to be happening at the same time. So I guess it was more like my other ability..."

"I knew it!" Jeremie exclaimed.

Now we all stared at Jeremie. He blushed and proceeded to explain himself. "I had been trying to understand the equation the entire class, after we woke up of course." He told us. "But I don't think even Ms. Hertz really understood it. It seemed to be something having to do with the workings of space and time..." then he became thoughtful for a moment. "I wonder..." and he began typing furiously on his computer.

"Aelita, you told us that you felt a resonance shortly before we came to talk to you." Yumi began. "Do you remember when that was?"

"I think it was somewhere around eleven thirty, why?" she asked.

"Did you seem to become more alert just as the resonance died down?"

"Yes," Aelita agreed, "It was as though I had woken up, but that's impossible because I don't sleep."

"Oh, that's because-" Jeremie started and stopped abruptly. "Never mind. It was just something I read."

"Ok," Odd said. "Is it just me or does it seem like Jeremie has something he wants to say?"

"No," Jeremie jumped. "It isn't anything. I just keep having a thought, but it's a stupid thought."

"You seem to really want to tell us." Yumi pointed out. "It can't be that stupid, you have tried five times now."

"You wouldn't believe me anyway." Jeremie told us. "It really isn't anything."

That struck me. Very little was ever nothing to Jeremie. If it wasn't important he just didn't bother to say anything. If he kept trying like this then it must mean that something was wrong...

"Jeremie..." I started.

"Jeremie!" Aelita almost yelled. "I'm sensing pulsations, two of them."

"Two, your kidding." Jeremie replied. "How can you feel two? How can X.A.N.A. activate two towers at the same time?"

"I don't know but you better get down here quickly. I think this is going to be bad. There is a massive surge of data flooding through Lyoko. If this continued everything could be destroyed... overwritten."

"Is it a virus?" Jeremie asked his voice suddenly panicked.

"I don't know," Aelita told him, fear in her voice, but a hint of awe as well. "Sometimes it acts like a virus but other times it doesn't... Please hurry and get here, Jeremie. I'm... I'm scared."

Suddenly the link was cut and the window disappeared. We all jumped at a crack of lightening outside. It had gotten visibly darker, and there was a headwind blowing sharply across the school.

"This doesn't look good." I said looking outside. "What if..."

"Ulrich! Don't." Jeremie snapped.

A little shocked I said, "Ok, let's go."

---

Within Lyoko Aelita sat watching the data stream flooding across the screens around her. She was sitting within a tower when Jeremie had contacted her so it was easy to watch as the data came into the supercomputer. It had started so subtly that she had barely noticed it at first, and she had really only noticed it when the first two towers were activated. Now the screens were flashing madly with text of many different kinds, and Aelita sat watching, waiting. She really didn't know what to expect from this, she had never seen anything like it happen before. It really was impossible to tell if it was a virus or not, the coding seemed to continue to change with every passing second...

Suddenly she made the horrifying discovery that the coding of what ever was passing through Lyoko was similar to her coding, and even worse, it was similar to X.A.N.A.'s coding. As she watched she made another discovery, what ever this program was it seemed to be taking over all coding within Lyoko. It was literally consuming the computer code and incorporating it into itself, and as it did this it activated every tower that it passed. She didn't know what kind of an effect this would have on earth, but she could feel its effect on Lyoko. The pulsations were becoming maddening, but she had to continue watching the program. She had to find out what it was doing, and she had to see what X.A.N.A.'s reaction would be to it.

As she continued to watch she came up with an idea. She made a short program that would show her how much of Lyoko was consumed by this viral program. When she looked at it she noticed that it was taking over the environmental programming first, and reaching each tower in turn. It had started in the mountain region, but had jumped over to the dessert region. Most of the mountain region was already lost, and it was moving very quickly. She was currently in the glacier region, one away from the desert region. When the viral program passed through the forest region she would only have a few minutes to wait before it would reach the tower she was in.

She took another approach to the program. Quickly she organized the list of Lyoko programs in order that the viral program was consuming them. To her utter horror she had already been consumed five percent. The list went like this: sub-basic programs, environmental mapping, regions, creatures, her, and X.A.N.A. Currently X.A.N.A. hadn't been consumed at all, but he wasn't doing anything either. Aelita didn't know if this was good or bad, but she could only hope that her friends would get here in time. But, then, another thought occurred to her, if any of them entered Lyoko the viral program would begin to consume them as well.

Now she was really beginning to panic, she thought quickly of a way to prevent her friends from getting into Lyoko. She couldn't let them be destroyed by the viral program, even if it would mean that she would be destroyed. She knew that there was no way of getting word to them, that was made obvious when the link had been cut. The only other way was to shut down and block the scanners. Quickly she accessed the program that ran the scanners and found that it was already far to corrupt for it to be used anyway... slightly comforted, but completely alone, she sat back and continued to watch the viral program's advancements, waiting for her inevasible destruction.

---

We had reached the factory now and Ulrich, Odd and I were waiting in the scanner room for Jeremie to give us the ok. But something must have been wrong, we had been waiting down here for nearly ten minutes and we hadn't heard a single word from him. I was beginning to get the feeling that something really bad was happening, bit I didn't know what. Looking around I also noticed that the others were feeling uncomfortable. This was just not right; we had to find out what was going on.

I began waling to the elevator but just as I reached it the door opened and we saw Jeremie in it. He was looking at the floor, holding his head in his hands. When he noticed the door was open he looked up and walked in. He seemed to be very weary, almost as if a great exhaustion had swept over him. As he walked he sagged almost exaggeratedly, his entire body drooping to one side, but his face was the worst of it. I almost knew immediately what must have happened.

"I can't get into Lyoko." He told us bluntly. "Many of the files are being corrupted by some thing. I don't know what it is but I can't get rid of it from out here and we can't get into Lyoko."

"What will we do then?" Odd asked. "We have to save Aelita. There must be some way."

"X.A.N.A. is already doing his best to fight against whatever is corrupting Lyoko but his progress is slow and whatever this thing is, it's very fast."

"So, how long do we have?" I asked.

"I can see about an hour at most." He said with a heavy sigh. "But it could be less, or possibly more."

"Are you sure that there is nothing we could do?" Ulrich asked, his eyes on the ground.

Jeremie slumped to the ground with a soft thud. He looked around for a moment and then held his head. As I watched I could almost feel his thoughts desperately searching for an answer. He scoured his mind, his memory, for any hint that might help. Then, suddenly, he looked up, a look of renewal in his eyes. After sitting for a moment longer he stood up and looked at us.

"Ok, there might be a chance but I need a CD." He told us. "It is a very special CD which I believe may be able to help us."

"Ok, where is it?" I asked.

"It should be on my desk." Jeremie replied quickly. "We have to get it and get back as quickly as possible."

"Alright, let's go." Ulrich said and we started off out of the factory towards Jeremie's dorm room.

---

Aelita had been watching the viral program infect the files of Lyoko for a quarter hour now and she was starting to get tired of doing nothing about it. X.A.N.A. was doing a nice job of stopping the program's process, or at the very least slowing it down, but he wasn't able to completely stop it alone. For most of the time Aelita had been viewing the coding of the program that was destroying her home and her, and she knew a little about how it worked. The program seemed to take computer coding and read it through, viewing what it did. Then, after reading the coding, it would change it slightly. The coding would suddenly change from hexadecimal or binary to something that looked like quad-decimal. The coding seemed to take a pattern of As Ts Cs and Gs. Likewise, the Gs and Cs seemed to follow each other and the Ts and As seemed to do the same. But the strange thing was that this seemed to be just like the genetic coding of organic matter, and worse than that there seemed to be something more to the coding as well.

After a while she decided to look at the coding through another program to see what else she could find. When opening it with a wave program she noticed that it seemed to have a sound wave attached to it. Then she tried to open it with an image file and found that it had something that looked like static. Aelita tried a number of different programs in opening the corrupted coding and found a number of different things that shouldn't have been there. After a while she began to realize what was happening. The viral program was changing the coding into a sort of organic coding. The genetic DNA sequence was obvious but after a while she began to understand what the others were as well. It all added up now, it was making the programs and files into living organic matter, if only they weren't stored within a computer...

With this knowledge in mind she watched with fascination as the viral program fought with X.A.N.A. and continued to destroy the world around her. Aelita knew that the computer wouldn't be able to understand what she had realized, and that she and everything within Lyoko was doomed, but now she had a greater understanding of why... and at least there was that.

Jeremie scampered into his room desperately looking for the disk which the traveler had sent him. Since time had reset it should still be sitting on his desk where he had placed it, right? He ran over to his desk and looked for the disk that had the traveler's insignia on it. He moved his other CDs around looking for it, barely noticing that he had left his door open. The others looked in on him awe struck. They understood that he was feeling but they didn't understand why he was reacting like this.

Frustrated Jeremie began looking under his desk, and then around it. The CD wasn't anywhere he looked and he was beginning to panic more and more as his options began to disappear. It was impossible, he knew that it had to be here. He had placed it on his desk directly before the incident... then during the storm he had run to the factory to try and see if it was a X.A.N.A. attack...

Someone began walking calmly toward Jeremie's room. The other's barely noticed her as she neared it. She walked up next to Ulrich and said, "Hello, Ulrich. Would you mind moving for a moment?"

"Oh, hey Sissi." Ulrich replied in a kind of daze and moved out of her way.

Sissi walked into Jeremie's room and directly up to Jeremie. She calmly tapped him on the back as he franticly looked for the CD under his bead. Jeremie stood up and turned to look at her. "What are you doing in here?" he asked.

"Jeremie, did you try looking in the last place you put it?"

"What are you talking about?" Jeremie asked.

"Think for a moment. You didn't leave it in your room, you brought it with you and it's still in..."

"The computer in the factory!" Jeremie yelped and got up to leave the room. But he turned around to thank Sissi, yet she wasn't there. Confused he looked around his room but she wasn't anywhere to be seen. "Come on guys, I must have left it in the factory."

"We heard her too, Einstein." Odd replied and they headed back to the factory.

Somewhere bordering this existence the traveler was sitting and looking out a large window overlooking a plane within Aricitopia. A tall woman was quietly walking up behind him about to jump on him. He sighed and said, "Hello Ginda. I see you have returned."

"What? Oh, can't you even act surprised?" Ginda said. She was very tall, somewhere around seven feet at least; her chestnut hair was long and let out. Her eyes were a brownish-green with a hint of grey-blue. She was wearing a long flowing dark blue dress and a pure white lock of hair was turning back to chestnut brown.

"Did you find out what I wanted?" the traveler asked.

"Of course; I'm not sure it is time yet though." She replied.

"Good, I have a somewhat more urgent matter to attend to first and I can't watch over the gariad."

"Why the melancholy?" Ginda asked a look of concern crossing her face.

"Remember the hunch that I felt in the gariad universe?" the traveler asked.

"Yes, I just returned from there..."

"I was mistaken about where it would hit first." He told her. "I should have known that it would be in a lyokian universe."

"What? How?" Ginda asked.

"He would need a way of getting some power back before he could do much else. So instead of trying what I thought he was going to do he instead waits for me to make the first move." The traveler sighed. "This is getting bad, and it is beginning to resemble the chronicles of destruction."

"Oh, and what did you do this time?" Ginda asked a note of sarcasm and disapproval in her voice.

"I tried to help Jeremie. I gave him a CD with the computer version of the Aricitic virus on it."

"And?"

"Jeremie used it."

"And..."

"Well, let's just say that our enemy has thought ahead and just recently figured out a way to regain the power that I took from him."

"How?" Ginda nearly yelled in shock.

"He moved himself into the Lyoko universe of these particular lyokians just when Jeremie used the disk. The result was that he took control of the disks sub-functions and got the virus back within himself."

Ginda looked out across the field, her eyes appearing to blank and then she gasped. "We have to help them."

"I would already be there if I could, but the universe isn't allowing me passage at the moment." The traveler said. "I was lucky that I could get the disk in at all."

"Well, have you contacted the universes 'gods'?" Ginda asked.

"That wouldn't help; the gods within the lyokian universes don't take humanoid shape. Initially they are the universes themselves. Talking to them wouldn't help."

"So what do we do?" Ginda asked.

"We wait and watch." The traveler said, and then added, "and hope that they can fix my mess."

"But if she dies..." her voice trailed off.

"I know, three years. All unprepared deaths take three years..."

"Stupid rule..."

"I know, but for some reason it is necessary." The traveler responded. "At least we can work with it, usually it's impossible..."

Jeremie had returned to the factory, his friends in close pursuit. He ran to the computer console and checked to see if the disk which he had been looking for was actually in the tray. It was. He sighed in relief. Now all he had to do was try and figure out how to use it. That would be the hard part, but, he was Jeremie, computer super genius. If it had to do with computers he would be able to figure it out. He opened the command line and accessed the CD. A window came up with striking clarity, the graphics on the CD were impossibly good to be able to fit on the CD. He began looking for anything that might be of some help. He found the Anti-Viral and Anti-Spyware program again, but when he clicked on it this time a different program appeared. It did an impossibly quick scan on the computer and came up with a report, 'Computer 73 infected: Virus,' it listed a number of viruses, one of which caught Jeremie's eye. The virus was called Aricitic and it had the highest amount of infection. A little red button was flashing at the bottom of the screen which read "stop and initiate anti-virus'.

Jeremie was baffled, what a stupid thing to say. Of course he wanted it to stop the virus and initiate the anti-virus. He quickly clicked the button and watched as the screen flashed into a very strange looking display. The display was cut in thirds, the top was what looked like a normal Lyoko display, the second was something that appeared to be hexadecimal, and the third was what appeared to be a genetics display except that it had two extra letters. On the right of each display was a command line and a percentage bar. The command line was going insane with file names and the percentage was rapidly going up. Suddenly Jeremie's eye caught the program that rematerialized people in the real world, and a sudden hope welled up within him.

Quickly Jeremie accessed the program which he had written, the one to materialize Aelita. He made a few adjustments and initiated the program. Now all he could do was pray that it worked...

Within Lyoko Aelita was still watching as the viral program consumed everything around her. She wasn't afraid any more, she knew that there was nothing that anyone could do. X.A.N.A. had fought bravely to save both of them but he had failed miserably and had been consumed first. Now she was utterly alone in Lyoko. There was nothing that she could do, nothing that any one could do...

She looked up and saw that he code had been nearly half consumed. She sighed and sat back. She didn't feel any different... well, that wasn't true. She was beginning to feel, how could she explain it... more alive. She was breathing, she could feel the blood pumping in her veins... it was almost like back on earth, but Aelita knew that it must just be an illusion. She was delirious... there, see, she knew it now. The percentage that told her how much she had been consumed, and how much Lyoko had been consumed was going down...

Aelita jerked back into full alertness. She had been on the verge of dozing, which was new for her, at least in Lyoko. She now looked at the numbers a little more closely. Some of them were going down and some of them were going up slower. It was impossible... how could this be happening, X.A.N.A. was dead. Quickly Aelita opened the task manager and saw what programs were being run in Lyoko. Two stuck out that she hadn't seen there before: ANTVK.ent and ANTARK.exe. 'ent? That was new, she hadn't ever heard of a program extension being called ent before. But one of them must be the program that was removing the virus, but which one?

"Wait a second, what the hell is he doing?" the traveler jumped in surprise.

"What?" Ginda asked shocked by the traveler's outrage.

"Jeremie stopped the Aricitic virus before it finished. Now it's applying the antivirus."

"But wouldn't that be a good thing?" Ginda asked shifting her weight in the chair that she was sitting in. "We want the Aricitic virus out of Lyoko, don't we?"

"Yes, but not yet. First it needs to..." he stopped suddenly and made a vulgar sound. "No." he moaned. "The idiot... the fool..."

"What's the matter now?" Ginda asked.

"Jeremie is activating the program that he made, the one to materialize Aelita." He made another vulgar noise and said a few swear words. "Aelita is still half infected with the Aricitic virus, the computer version takes a while to do either job... if he materializes her now she will die for sure. She will literally- No, the fool!"

"Is there anything that we can do?" Ginda asked, her voice shaken and a look of concern crossing her face.

"I am trying to contact him but I have been completely blocked..." he looked around helplessly and then made a few gestures in the air. After a while, as nothing happened he turned to Ginda. "Can you?"

"A little, I can feel inside the universe, but it isn't stable. What the hell is going on in there?"

"I'm not sure..." the traveler said and made the gestures again. "Damn, Ginda, can you contact Gwydevis?"

"Gwydevis? What do you need him for?"

"He should be able to get in there... because of his previous excursions he isn't as limited in certain ways that I am. If any of us can get in there it should be him." He paused to think for a moment. "On second thought, you both better go."

"Got it. I'll see what I can do." Then she suddenly vanished.

"Now this isn't going very well. It went better the first time..." the traveler muttered, almost as though he were speaking to someone.

"Damn! Why won't this work?" I yelled.

I had tried to activate the materialization program a number of times but it hadn't been able to initiate a single one of them. It would open and then crash almost immediately. Each time I would check back to see how much progress the antivirus was having. Something seemed to be wrong because it kept going back over files that it had already fixed. I couldn't figure out why it would do that, but then, I didn't really understand much about what was going on right now. This was all going badly, worse even than any of the X.A.N.A. attacks that we had ever had, and it was all because of... the disk?

I initiated the program again, fully expecting it to crash, but this time it fully loaded. Quickly, desperately, I selected Aelita and began the materialization process. Now all I could do was pray that it would work, and, well, get down to the scanners to help her when she arrived on earth again. I quickly got up and scampered to the elevator. I briefly heard the others following me but the door closed before they reached the elevator. I told the elevator to go down one floor and waited. When the door opened I jumped out and ran to the scanner that she would come out of. I heard the elevator going back up to pick up the others, but I ignored it.

The door opened and a smoky fog came out of it. Aelita was lying on the floor of the scanner tube, curled up into a ball. I bent down and gently pulled her out of it. Gently I picked her up, still kneeling on the floor, and slumped into a sitting position. I quickly pulled her to me in a hug, just happy that she was alive, and heard her cough. Slowly I released her allowing her to lay on my legs and saw that her eyes were open. She smiled wearily and I saw tears in her eyes.

"I thought I would never see you again..." she said in a weak voice and coughed.

"I did everything I could to change that." I replied, my voice trembling.

"I..." she coughed, a hacking, tearing, cough. "I wish I could have returned with a better reason."

"You are here now." I replied.

She coughed again, the same painful cough, but this time I noticed something that made my hart fall. She had coughed up blood... this couldn't be happening. I couldn't loose Aelita, I simply couldn't loose her. It wasn't fair.

I pulled her to me again feeling hot tears coming to my eyes. I couldn't loose her, I loved her. I just... I...

"Jeremie," Aelita said, putting a finger to one of my eyes and taking it away with a tear on it. "I love you..."

Suddenly she bent over in a convulsion of pain, then her body relaxed and she fell back onto me again. I looked into her eyes but they were dead... I reached over to close them, a pain like no other flooding my body, but as my hand neared her face something began to happen. Her skin began to fade and crumble, disintegrating as I watched. As I realized what was happening another pain filled my body and I broke down...

The door to the elevator opened and Ulrich, Odd and I hurried out of it. I could see Jeremie sitting in front of one of the scanners with Aelita in his arms, but something was wrong, he was crying. A low moan escaped his mouth just as I looked at Aelita's body. Suddenly I backed away in horror, her body was disintegrating, turning into nothing, not even dust... The process was slow but it was fast enough for all of us to watch in horror and revulsion. When it was complete nothing remained of my pink haired friend, nothing at all.

Jeremie doubled over, his arms still out stretched where Aelita's body had been. I could hear him sobbing and could see his body trembling. He was muttering something that I couldn't hear or understand, until he finally sobbed one word, "Aelita..."

I quickly moved over to him and placed my hand on his back. I knew that it wouldn't do much to comfort him, but it was all that I could think of. I could hear Odd and Ulrich's reactions behind me. I knew what they were thinking, what they were feeling. Aelita had been one of our best friends, but she had been more to Jeremie. She had been to him what Ulrich was to me, and to have her taken away from him like that... it simply wasn't right.

Suddenly I felt a pang in my mind and a touch of an omniscient presence; then there was another. One of the presences which had just appeared felt evil to me, but the other felt almost ultimately good. The good one felt shocked, then regret, and the evil one felt nearly the same. I turned around to look where the feeling was coming from and felt something brush against my mind, but just as my eyes reached where the presence was coming from it suddenly disappeared. The other one followed quickly after it.

I wasn't quite sure but it was almost as though they had come to try and help, but it was to late now. Aelita was dead, and by the way she had gone, no one could bring someone back from the dead.