Chapter 7
"I meant exactly that," Uncle Jules said calmly from the couch. "The agents could be looking for you, Aelita. We can't risk having you at Kadic right now, and you'll be much safer here."
Aelita heard Jeremie's voice saying her name, and she pressed the phone against her ear. "He says he's not bringing me back," she said, feeling numb once more.
What? Jeremie blurted. Who is he? What's he want with you? Why won't he bring you back?
"He says that he's my uncle, but I don't know what to think about that," she said, not caring if Jules had his feelings hurt or not. At the moment, she was too angry to care. "He brought me here to keep me safe from agents that were after my father."
Silence. Then, Umm, Aelita, you have to know he's lying. You don't have a father.
"That's what I told him!" she wailed, feeling ready to cry again. "But he knows about Lyoko!"
Silence, as if Jeremie were too stunned to speak. WHAT?
Jules leapt from the couch, taking the phone from her. "Aelita, you told your friends about Lyoko?" he asked, sounding worried.
"They're the ones who helped me leave it," Aelita said, reaching out to snatch the phone away from Jules. "Of course they know."
"Who else knows?" Jules demanded while Jeremie's tinny-sounding voice was demanding to know what had happened. Jules kept the phone out of Aelita's reach, sounding worried.
Aelita? Hello? What's going on?
"Only my friends, now give me back that phone!" Aelita snapped. She was tired of being nice to this kidnapper!
Looking grim, Jules hung up, pushed a few buttons, and turned the phone off, leaving Aelita speechless and staring at him.
"What did you do that for?" Aelita demanded, pummeling Jules' chest with her fists. "Give me that phone!"
"I think we're done making phone calls today, Aelita," he said, locking the phone in a drawer. "The situation is worse than I thought. Outsiders know about Lyoko. How are we going to keep the project under wraps now?"
"I don't care!" Aelita shouted, feeling angrier by the moment. "Right now, the whole world can go to Lyoko on vacation if they want, I just want to go back to Kadic! I don't care if you're really my uncle or a crazed maniac or a figment of my imagination! I want to go back to school and be just Aelita Stones again!"
That seemed to snap Jules out of his worry for a moment. "Aelita, sweetie. You can't go back to Kadic, and you can never be just plain old 'Aelita Stones' again. Lyoko and the threat from XANA are too big to consider living normal lives. You're linked with Lyoko and XANA, aren't you, since you've been there so long?"
"Yes, but we've almost solved that problem," she said, sounding certain. "I won't have to worry once Jeremie and I figure it out."
Jules nodded. "And you'll shut down XANA and live happily ever after, huh?"
"That's our current plan, yes," Aelita told him, glaring. "So that's why I want to go back to Kadic. The more time I spend away from there, the longer it will take to figure out how to break the link between me and XANA."
Jules looked at her thoughtfully. "I understand. You know, Aelita, I wasn't going to show you this, but I think you should know. Come with me."
Aelita looked at him. "What are you going to show me? I won't go with you unless I know."
"You're not going to make this easy on me, are you?" Jules sighed, sinking onto the couch. "All right, then. When your father began to build Lyoko, he made a copy of all he did and sent it to me. Well, I tweaked it a little, intrigued by the concept of a digital world. Right now, I've got something on my hands that I don't quite understand. You see, I brought you here to keep you safe and to let you know who I was, but I also wanted your help with something. What I have now is something like a parallel Lyoko, but it has a little twist. While you were scanned onto Lyoko, there's an inhabitant in this Lyoko that I made inadvertently. He thinks and feels and lives, but he is a part of that world. He interacts with me, Campbell, and Mantrell, but I can tell he gets lonely. What I really want to do is to bring him here. Since you were brought here, I would like your help in bringing him here as well."
Aelita stared at him. "How? Where is it? How did you--?" she stopped and took a deep breath. "Show me."
Space
"Aelita? Aelita?" Jeremie yelled into the phone. "Oh, great!"
"What happened?" Ulrich demanded, hopping from foot to foot in an effort to keep from losing his mind. His adrenaline was pumping like crazy.
"Someone took the phone away from Aelita and hung it up, and he's blocked my number! Do you have your phone here?"
"No, I didn't stop to grab it last night when we ran out," Ulrich muttered, sounding ready to kick himself.
That was when the elevator opened, revealing Odd, Yumi, and Kiwi. "Still haven't found her?" Odd asked, seeing their long faces. "I brought your clothes,Ulrich's phone, and some breakfast for you two, as well as Kiwi, to keep us all company."
"How did you two sneak away from school?" Jeremie asked, surprised. "You have to know that Jim and Mr. Delmas wouldn't be happy with you for what you did lastnight, Odd."
Odd shrugged whileYumi smiled. Odd hadgone to her house before she'd even left for school and explained thewhole situation, as well as what he'd donelast night. Taking turns, they explained this whileJeremie and Ulrich dug intothe breakfast sandwiches, fruit, and cartonsof milk that Odd had brought. Then, Jeremie and Ulrich explained what they had been doing, leading up to the call they received that morning.
"And that's when you two arrived," Jeremie finished, wiping away his milk mustache.
"I'll try Aelita on my phone," Yumi said, pulling her mobile out. Dialling the number that Jeremie gave her from his phone, she waited, listening whenan answering service picked up.
"It's some guy named Jules Hopper, and he's sorry, but he can't come to the phone right now," Yumi muttered. "D'you think that he could be related to Franz Hopper?"
"He'd have to be. After all, it's not really a common name, is it?" Odd pointed out.
"He may have been telling the truth," Jeremie said, sounding very thoughtful. "Butthen again, he could be lying."
"If only we could know for sure," Yumi said, sounding scared. "I mean, poor Aelita..."
Everyone was quiet, but Jeremie smiled. "She managed to give me the address," he said, causing everyone to look at him. "Route 22, no. 31, Ancienville."
Odd whistled. "Ancienville? Isn't that the little resort village up in the mountains? That's two hours away by car. It'd take us forever to walk it."
"But it's not too far by train, and the Eurail line goes right to it. We can take a taxi the rest of the way, or rent bicycles," Jeremie pointed out.
"Sounds good to me," Ulrich said, grinning. "There's just one thing, though."
Everyone looked at him.
"What do you think Jim and Mr. Delmas, not to mention Yumi's parents, are going to do to us once we get back?"
Silence fell, but then Odd piped up, "Let's just beg for mercy when we get back, huh? We have to help Aelita!"
Space
Jules led Aelita to a set of stairs that obviously led down into the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, Aelita could see nothing but one big room with a jury-rigged super-computer. There were bundles of CPUs that were set up through the room, anda few keyboards and four monitors sitting on the desk in the center. There was also a strange affair that looked like a glass coffin that had wires running out of its back.
"What is that?" she asked, pointing. "The glass coffin thing?"
"That's my version of a scanner," Jules explained. "I don't know how Franz built his, but this one works very much like a flatbed scanner, except that it scans every part of you with apparati hidden in the glass. Neat, huh?"
Aelita looked at it. "It reminds me of the glass coffin in 'Snow White,'" she said, turning to him and then looking about at all of the CPUs. With the way they were set up, they resembled a miniature city of skyscrapers. "It looks like you used a bunch of PCs to make this set-up. Does it really power a Lyoko? How can you get enough power to do that?"
"They may look like ordinary CPUs, but they have a great deal more of storage space than regular computers. Also, I have a several generators running around the clock to get enough power to run the system. It all works, thank goodness. I don't think that Merrick would forgive me if he shut down."
The name caught Aelita's attention. "Merrick?"
"The inhabitant of the Lyoko I have running here," Jules explained. "When he was first born, I asked him what his name was, but he said that he didn't know what a name was. I explained, and he said he'd like to choose his own. He chose Merrick."
"Oh." Aelita didn't know what else to say to that. She was still having trouble believing that Jules had actually managed what he'd claimed to do.
"Would you like to meet him?" Jules invited, settling into the chair that sat in front of the desk.
Aelita nodded, somewhat nervous.
Without a word, Jules turned to a keyboard and typed in an access code. A window opened, and she heard some humming, as if a program were running.
"Merrick?" Jules said, trying to get his attention. "Merrick? Where are you?"
"I'm in the garden, Uncle Jules," came over the computer's speakers.
Jules hit two more keys, and a different window opened, revealing a scene of grass, flowers, blue sky, trees, gravel paths, and a fountain. Next to the fountain, on a bench, sat a boy. He was dressed in black trousers and boots, a white shirt and black tunic over it, and he had very fair skin. Most amazing of all, he had bright silver eyes and silver-streaked black hair.
"Is it morning?" he asked, and smiled when he saw Jules nod. "Well, good morning, then! How are you?"
"I'm fine, thank you, Merrick," he said, smiling. "How are you this morning? Aren't you supposed to be studying?"
Merrick shrugged, looking a little chagrined. "The garden looked so nice that I couldn't stand studying in the classroom any longer. I wish you could fix the programs so I could bring some books out here."
"Well, I'm working on it," Jules said. It sounded to Aelita as if they'd had this conversation before. "I brought someone to see you today, Merrick."
Merrick looked interested. "Mr. Campbell or Mr. Mantrell?"
"Neither," Jules said, enjoying the surprise on the boy's face. "It's my niece, Aelita. Would you like to meet her?"
"Niece? You mean, your brother's daughter? The girl you told me about?"
"The one and only," Jules promised. "Well? How about it?"
Merrick nodded, and Jules waved Aelita in front of the monitor. Up close, Merrick looked even more interesting, and she could see every expression on his face. He was staring at her, and Aelita was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. Didn't he know that it was rude to stare? His next words explained everything.
"Oh, my. You're the first real girl I've ever seen, and Uncle Jules didn't tell the truth when he said you were pretty. You're not pretty at all!"
Aelita allowed her surprise to show. First, she was surprised that Jules had already told this boy about her, and second, he was awfully candid in his opinions! Jeremie told her all the time that she was pretty! He said so at least three times a day, and often he said that she was beautiful! When she asked the others if she really was, they always agreed. What did this boy know?
Calm down, she told herself. Maybe I don't look pretty to him. "Well, if I'm not pretty, what am I, then?" she asked, trying to be nice.
"Beautiful," Merrick answered, still staring. "Absolutely beautiful. Could we get married?"
Aelita felt herself blush a bright red that she was sure Merrick could see over the video link. Uncle Jules chuckled.