While our heroes were entering the city, and a malevolent entity bent on seducing Aelita, escaping Lyoko, and destroying everybody else watched them, everybody's favorite demonic AI was in as much shock over the discovery as the kids were.
Xana, as the polymorphic clone, watched the readings of the holomap carefully. His latest plan did not include this. How long had this city existed? If it was on Lyoko, that meant he should rule over it, right? He supposed that when this ordeal was over, he could convert it into a nice fortress. But this wasn't the time to worry about that.
The disturbing thing was that the landmass was not on any of the Lyoko maps he had created for himself shortly after Franz and Aelita's first virtualization. There was just wide open space. Yet now he could plainly see four colored triangles moving across a cityscape, dutifully following the pulsations. He had intended for them to get lost, but he had failed to consider the fail safe route. It made him angry.
Yet, he decided, there was still time to salvage the operation. He could worry about exploration later. The city was an abandoned urban maze. If he could make them loose the pulsations, there was little chance that they would find their way out again. Then he could hunt them at will. He ordered the frelions to return from their post in the sky and attack. Then he called up a window like the one Aelita had talked to Jeremie in before her materialization.
Instead of Aelita, though, a Blok appeared in the window and made a stiff bow. This was Xana's new lieutenant of the 17th Blok division. The old one had passed away in a bizarre attack Xana had dreamed up a few weeks before that involved a flying saucer attack on a virtualized Kadic Academy.
"Lieutenant. Take 300 Bloks and divide them between the two gates to the city. If by any chance those bumbling idiots somehow make it out, I want them to shoot the three warriors down. I'll send the Scipizoa. Good luck." Xana ordered.
And with that, Xana closed the window. That took care of that. What about the unconscious boy bound in electricity behind him?
He decided that his death could wait until the others were destroyed. He wanted to see the look on his face when he told him his friends had been deleted.
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Aelita, Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi, meanwhile, were walking through the city, still following the pulsations. That did not mean, however, that they were not bothering to look around in awe at the ruins around them. Everything was silent. The dusty gray buildings rose above them, silent monoliths with many square holes that had probably once been windows, and the occasional much larger and jagged hole that showed damage to the building.
The street was littered with rubble. On one side of the road there was what looked like a car, but it had no wheels. Instead there were three large rocket boosters on the back. Ulrich guessed that it probably was rigged to fly, just like their own vehicles.
Occasionally they would see rubble piled into what looked like makeshift barriers, and once or twice they picked up what looked like long, broken metal tubes with a strange device attached to one end. Yumi guessed that it may have been a gun of some sort.
"Its feels strange..." Yumi said, as they walked. "Walking here. What do you think they were like?"
"Who were like?" Ulrich asked.
"You know... the last people to live here. It looks like it was abandoned a long time ago."
"Was it abandoned?" Aelita said, suspiciously.
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it. The damage to the buildings, the rubble barricades, the broken weapons lying on the ground... There was obviously some sort of battle here. The signs are all over. This city went out with a bang."
They walked on, lost in thought, as their imaginations were filled with images of people screaming and fleeing in panic as their barricades were overrun and the last brave souls standing to fight so that their friends and family could get away, while the city burned and chaos reigned around them. And in the shadows... who? Who was the enemy that had destroyed them?
Their thoughts were interrupted by a familiar buzzing sound, and they looked up to see the frelions swooping out of the sky. Odd, Yumi and Ulrich leapt into gear instantly. The horrible scenes that had been playing in their heads had been building up their rage, and they needed to pour it out on something. Yumi threw a fan with an angry shout and it took out three of the seven at once, but they were replaced by four more that came flying in from a different direction.
"Let's go!" Ulrich shouted, and the kids ran off down the street. Ulrich leapt up onto a piece of rubble and jumped through the air, slashing through another frelion. He went clear over a low building and landed on another road perpendicular to the one they had been walking on since they entered. The other three ran to catch up with him, Yumi and Aelita turning the corner while Odd paused for a moment to fire at and destroy two more of the frelions, then ran to catch up. The five remaining let out a barrage of lasers, while the kids dodged and continued to run.
Down one street and up another they went, zigzagging and turning at every other corner in an attempt to take the monsters by surprise. They went into one of the buildings. The frelions, when they got there, looked around confused. Yumi smiled as the large rock she had been holding above the door with telekinesis dropped down and crushed all of them, before they came out back into the street.
"Well, that takes care of them," Odd said with a smile. "Let's keep going."
They looked around to find the pulsations, and stopped. They were at an intersection, and they couldn't see any pulsations in any direction. It was then that they realized the horrible truth of what Xana had done. None of them could remember the route they had taken. Xana had deliberately started the chase, and now they were hopelessly lost.