I would have been able to update sooner had I not had a mountain of schoolwork to do. Well, here is Chapter 3.

IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE

2 days later

Kent "Rocky" Perego was doing his best to sleep, but he simply wasn't tired. A thousand different thoughts spun through his head. The loss of the President and uncertainty about his employment in the imminent future were predominant. The job he and his longtime partner, Johnny "Scooter" Colenso had been asked to join in France was not exactly what he expected. It was a long fall from Navy Seal to secret babysitter.

Things were getting out of hand. The loss of the President meant that their country was leaderless. And unless they could confirm his death, by that find his body, they could not swear in the Vice President. Sure they were finding remains, but not his. If they hadn't found them yet they probably

They also found bits and pieces of what they thought had killed him as well.

The recovered fragments of the "creatures" had been seized by the FBI, but T-Bone had managed to recover a couple of the fragments and sent them to the safehouse ahead of her. Unfortunately she would not join them for another week. He had looked at one of the fragments; a piece of what the ones they were watching called a "kankrelat." The symbol was essentially a stylized bulls-eye, staring back balefully at him. He thought of how he could have been somewhere else in the world, maybe in the Caribbean, enjoying Tequila and retirement, had it not been for T-Bone's sharp eye and persuasive words.

Well, they knew one thing; they could stop these robotic things with guns. The bullet-riddled shell of the 'kankrelat' proved it. Full-auto perhaps, preferably belt-fed. Explosives like grenade launchers and C4 could work as well.

After the Seals, he thought it was back to the civilian life for him and Colenso, but he somehow wound up in France, watching schoolkids and making sure the world was safe to exist another day. Still it was a job, and he was still in the game.

He had been on what seemed like dozens of different operations. Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Anti-drug operations in South America, Peacekeeping in Afghanistan and Iraq, He and Scooter had been all over the world, they had two dozen medals between them. Now they were here in France, watching a bunch of schoolkids. Such a long fall.

Rocky got out of his bed, wondering since he couldn't sleep, what to do. It was pointless to watch TV. All that was on was talk about the President and his unfortunate death. And maybe talk about his visit to Egypt and the Suez incident. Certainly about the ever-rising death-rates in Iraq. He turned on the stereo and sat down on the sofa to relax. Some local underground band was playing.

Whatever happened from here on out Rocky knew, things would only get worse.

Aelita was dreaming again. Not the dream of the wolves and her childhood doll Puck like she used to have, this was different.

She was in Lyoko, walking through some kind of tunnel in the Mountain Sector. It was curved and round like those in the sewers, she somehow knew she had been walking a long time. Then she came to the end of the tunnel. She walked into some kind of vast chamber, with something in the middle of the room, some kind of statue. She couldn't tell who or what it was of. She walked to the far wall, which had some kind of writing or symbols on it. She placed her palm on a symbol set in the center, and then-

She woke up. It was the third night in a row she had had that dream, and it was starting to trouble her. She had been having it since that day, since she was out of Lyoko for good. She had thought she was free, but this dream, this vision, was keeping her there like a mental chain. It was as if something didn't want her to leave. Xana? She hoped it wasn't.

The clock on the wall read three-thirty. She realized she had to use the bathroom. It was something she was still getting accustomed too. She got out of bed and out into the hall. The restrooms were only a few doors down-

And then she saw him, standing in the hall just a few yards away. A man in a business suit, middle-aged by his appearance. Someone she had never seen. And he was looking directly at her.

Aelita was scared. But not scared enough not to stand her ground. She somehow thought she knew who the person was. And her friends weren't here to protect her.

"Xana, I presume?" She asked somewhat fearfully.

The stranger's reply was not in words, but as thought.

I am not the person that you fear,

But I may be one that you hold dear.

Who was this, she thought, He didn't move his lips but he was talking. And there was something else that was strange about his appearance, something that she couldn't quite see.

I may be strange, but don't be afraid,

Your future's path has been made.

"W-What do you mean?" she stammered.

You have dreamt the dream of Ashton Cray,

His crypt is where your destinies' lay.

She had noticed what was strange about the figure. He did not cast a shadow. It was as if he was a ghost. And he was somehow shimmering with an inner light of some kind.

"But h-how do you get there? To h-his tomb?" she stammered even more after noticing this.

The man was suddenly a blur, and in an instant, he was in front of her, his hand was on her forehead. She saw flashes, images, as if they were being uploaded directly to her brain, pictures of a place on Lyoko. Two peaks, a pile of rocks between them, a pool of water.

An instant later the figure had suddenly returned to where he had stood moments earlier. Aelita suddenly felt dizzy, and leaned heavily on a wall for support. The world spun around her, her mind flooded with images.

"W-Who…are you?" she managed to get out.

At first, I knew I had no name,

But X, you can call me by that name.

And with that, he vanished into thin air.

Aelita was still dizzy, her mind cluttered with images and pictures yet to be sorted out. It was a minute before the world stopped spinning. But a sentence kept playing over and over in her head: His tomb is where your destinies' lay.

He meant her and her friends. But she couldn't trust him. It could've been Xana in disguise, trying to lure her friends into a trap. She would have to talk to the others tomorrow. She was too tired, she didn't want to wake them with this, and she still needed to go to the bathroom. The dream could wait.

Five minutes later, she collapsed in bed, exhausted. She looked over at the clock on the wall, Three Twenty-Eight. She wondered again if what the strange person had said was true. Her head still ached as she drifted into sleep's embrace.

It was nine-thirty local time In Washington D.C. as a meeting between various officials began in a relatively large room somewhere beneath the Pentagon.

About a dozen people sat at a large oak table in the richly furbished room, designed to look comfortable and spacious. The carpet was a shade of burgundy, as was the padding on the chairs. The people sitting in the room were some of the most well-known figures in Washington, with the exception of the two that were giving this presentation.

The man sitting at the head of the table was clearly old, his crisp, new three-piece suit and graying hair contrasting his wrinkles. Despite his years he had eyes sharp as a hawk's and a mind that was crystal clear. The others in the room knew Secretary of the Navy James Fitzgerald well. He had established himself in government as a as a member of the House of Representatives, serving multiple terms. He had flown with the President to Cairo, and was among the last to see him alive. The only reason he had not joined Thornton on his last doomed flight was to stay behind and help search personally for those still missing in the Suez. When he had heard that Air Force One was destroyed, he had been on the first plane out of Egypt to the U.S. He and Thornton had been old friends; his loss had hit him hard.

To Fitzgerald's right sat a woman who was as notorious in politics as Fitzgerald. Sierra Smith was the Assistant Director for Field Operations in the CIA, and a good friend of Fitzgerald's. She had spent the last year in the field and few of the men in the room were brave enough to challenge her.

"Well, I believe we all know what the reason we are all here is, so let's get started," Said Fitzgerald.

A young woman standing off to the side dimmed the lights. A projector at the back of the room flipped on, and Fitzgerald began to address those with him.

"Three days ago, Air Force One went down in international waters approximately eighty-five miles north-northwest if the Bahaman Islands, on its way to Miami, from Cairo, Egypt, With President Thornton aboard. Officially so far, it is being suspected as some kind of technical failure."

"And unofficially?" A man sitting in the far back asked. Fitzgerald recognized Vice President Oliver Logan, now the most important man in the country.

Fitzgerald Continued. "Unofficially, The FBI and the CIA suspect that Michael Thornton was assassinated."

"Assassinated? By who?" Was the general uproar at those words.

"Quiet, please." Fitzgerald said. "Ms. West, I believe you should continue from here.

West began. "Even we at the CIA are still trying to understand who the person we suspect is." West then began to speak.

"It is hard to decide where to begin exactly. But the most common place this saga has started was with a subsidiary program of a much larger one.

"During the Early Nineteen-Seventies, the need for a reliable information network in the Eurasian Theater became urgent. At the time, the former Soviet Union had begun a major upgrade in its logistics infrastructure, relying more and more on computers and electronic communication that were both still relatively new at the time. The project that was launched to monitor the U.S.S.R. and other threats to world peace abroad became known as Project Echelon."

An offshoot of Echelon was an offensive branch that would have been a powerful weapon against the Soviets at the time, had it not been for the actions of a lone enemy agent. An agent who, with the help of a computer program he had designed himself, attacked and destroyed the facility where the Carthage Program was located.

"I remember that," another officer replied. "It was hushed up, something to do with a gas explosion."

"In 1991, we had no idea how he had done it. But in light of recent events we have come to understand who, or what, we are now up against.. Let's just say that if we don't find a solution to this problem," and West paused for a moment. "Well, let's just say the future of the human race looks grim."

As the meeting continued, the faces of the people in the room showed awe, shock, and a realization of the fact that not only was their country not as secure as they once thought, but that the entire planet was at risk.