Here's a Jeremie Belpois chapter. The Taelia arc continues. Hope you enjoy!

Everything checked out. There was a Morgan Xenia Stones on record in the archives. It was a file from 1978 for a ten year old girl, and there was a special notation on it that said she was in a special program with the school psychologist. When we found it, Taelia let everyone get a good look at it...and then she burned it. Yep, she took a lighter right out of her sock and burned the whole file. When we asked her why she did that she said she was erasing her trail. There was no way of confirming or denying any of the things she said about Project Carthage, as documentation of anything that happened there would probably be more trouble than it was worth to get, and anything Taelia would have had like an ID card or contract were burned. But when I did a little digging into the supercomputer I did find the assets for Taelia's avatar.

Could that all have been planted? Well...yeah. Plus, everyone was being extra cautious since who we thought was a friend was actually our collective greatest nightmare come alive. So I was going to try one more thing. Whenever a spectre was scanned it would mess with the scanner program and read out as an error. There was always the chance there was some sort of other error going on, but if there was no error at all, we could be more or less certain that she in fact was who she claimed to be and not a smoky lightning death monster.

"So if I step into the scanner will you finally be convinced?" Taelia crossed her arms. She was clearly tired of the questioning and the doubt from our end but...You could never be too sure, especially if you were dealing with what was potentially a life or death situation...unless you didn't have time to be careful and just had to string some code together and pray it worked. I was well versed in that type of problem solving. This, however. I mean, we had some time, right?

"Yes. That is..." I stumbled over my words a little. "Going into the scanner will prove you aren't a spectre. It won't prove you're on our side, but I have no idea why anyone who isn't a spectre would lie about all of this." Seriously, I could think of nothing. Except maybe the Men in Black to find out about Xana? Maybe? That was a long shot. She was so genuinely frightened of them that I doubted that was the case.

"Will you at least let me in on the details of what's happening if I do this?" Taelia asked, sighing.

I looked around at my friends, none of them were very happy with Taelia. Ulrich was giving her the cold shoulder, Yumi glared, Odd looked neutral but wary, and Aelita...Well, I was the most concerned about Aelita. She was in the corned of the factory, sitting back and rubbing her temples. It was understandable. To suddenly have someone come into your life and say they were someone so important...and she had no memory of Taelia. She said she maybe vaguely had the memory of another woman taking care of her, but...no actual memories. To suddenly have this in her life. I had to do something to cheer her up later. But for now, I had a job to do.

"Yes. We'll let you know what's going on." I said on behalf of everyone. I probably shouldn't have talked for everyone, but none of them were speaking up, or even really paying much attention to the actual situation. They were all probably occupied with the fact that five days ago the same girl standing here had been hiding in the ceiling here and had threatened to kill us, and had nearly succeeded with Ulrich.

"Good, then go for it, Belpois." Taelia walked off into the elevator and pressed the button.

"Jeremie. regardless of the result, I don't think you should help her." Yumi finally spoke up. "She's already proven she's dangerous to have around."

I glanced over at Yumi, and then at Ulrich. Yeah, she could be dangerous. But she also knew things...we needed all the help we could get. Morgan hadn't struck yet but...that first time. I let out an involuntary shudder at the memory. Morgan seemed somehow colder than Xana, or...I couldn't quite put my finger on it but something was different between them. The pain of about a dozen consecutive electrocutions didn't help. Despite Yumi's concerns, I started up the procedure. Everyone gathered a little closer to see the results.

And...the scan completed with no error. She was human, alright. That was good to know.

And there was beeping. Everyone groaned, it was almost a Pavlovian response. The Superscan was going off, there was a Xana attack. Morgan attack? Xana attack? There was just an attack, ok?

"Well, did I pass?" Taelia said, as the elevator opened back on this floor.

"There's something a little more important right now." Ulrich said, as he headed for the elevator, along with the others.

"Well what's got you so grumpy...er all of a sudden?" Taelia asked. She looked over at the screen. She might have known about Xana, but she didn't know about Xana attacks. Or at least it didn't seem like it. She must have noticed all the flashing and beeping on my screen because suddenly she was looking over my shoulder. "And what's this?"

"An activated tower." I explained. "The rest of you head on down. I don't know what she has in store for you so be careful." Everyone headed to the elevator, when Aelita got up it was like her body was weighted down. After this attack I really had to do something to make her feel better.

"Activated tower?" Taelia looked at the screen blankly.

"Xana used to take control of a tower on Lyoko, a hub for-"

"Yes, yes, I know what towers are, I created the damned things. What did he do with them?" Taelia interrupted.

"He used them to attack the Earth directly. Aelita is the only one able to deactivate them and stop the attack. We all help her do that." I explained, starting up the virtualization procedure. "Listen, I don't have much time to explain right now. We'll talk later. Why don't you go back to Kadic and tell me what the attack is. And if it's a spectre maybe you can shoot it with your fancy gun."

"You mean this ol' thing?" Taelia asked, pulling out the gun and twirling it on her finger, then pointing it like she was going to shoot. "With pleasure." I could feel myself tense up, not that I wasn't tense already from the whole Morgan thing.

"Can you please put that away and just...go?" I gave her my phone number and then turned all of my attention to the Supercomputer, and I heard the elevator go up so I assumed she had left. It was just me and the keyboard now. Me and the screens. I thought this was over and done with. It had only been what, a week since Xana died? And there was no guarentee he was actually dead. Imagine having to deal with two of them at the same time? At least Morgan took after her father. This would be similar. Nothing he couldn't handle, right?

"Hello there. Did you come to throw me a welcome home party?" It was Morgan. She was going up against them herself?

"Uh...Jeremie...? The big bad wolf herself is here. We could use a ride." Odd said.

"I'm on it. And don't worry, guys. It's just like William, no sweat." and then it hit me. "WILLIAM! I forgot to call William, agh, I'm so stupid!"

"Jeremie!" Odd yelled. Right, the vehicles, that first. I quickly called up the commands to virtualize an instance of the Overboard, Overbike, and Overwing. And there went their lifepoints. They were only going down one at a time, too, it was weird. I had no way of knowing what Morgan's fighting style was. It was almost like the Hornet's poison, slowly sapping their life points away. I virtualized their vehicles and called William. After two rings, he picked up.

"Hello?"

"William. It's Jeremie. Morgan's activated a tower, and we could use some backup. Head to the factory right away."

"Uh, I don't think I can do that, Jeremie."

"And why not?" I asked, a little impatiently. He couldn't blame me for being a little on edge.

"Because there's a big smokey monster blocking the way."

That must have been the attack. A big...spectre beast? I was certain Odd could come up with a better name for it. Just then, the phone rang, it was Taelia. Guess she found it too. Then I heard the sound of a large crash, and a lot of noise. William had stopped talking.

"William, what's going on?" I asked.

The big spectre beast had knocked over an 11 story office building with no warning whatsoever. The streets were in chaos. Everyone was running away. News vans were driving up to get the story as it was happening, at the risk of their own lives. Hundreds of people were immediately killed. The creature then shouted in a loud, distorted voice.

JEREMIE BELPOIS, ULRICH STERN, ODD DELLA ROBBIA, YUMI ISHIYAMA, WILLIAM DUNBAR, AELITA SCHAEFFER!

It yelled this over and over again, and ran down the streets. William stood there. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. This was different than Xana...this was way different than Xana. This was a different animal entirely. People were dead. She had absolutely no regard for human life and absolutely no problem using her power for destruction.

William saw a blue streak come from behind him and hit the beast. A blue ripple enveloped the beast, and then it fizzled and disappeared.

"There was a monster and it knocked down a building but now it's gone. I have to help people get out of the wreckage."

And William hung up. I glanced over at the tower window...It was deactivated. I got another call from Taelia. I picked it up this time.

"Jeremie, I took it down but I think we're gonna need a Return to the Past for this one." Taelia said. "And it was screaming your names."

I took another look at the screen. The tower was deactivated but Morgan was still there, fighting. I had an idea. I typed out a little tracking program, using the one already on lyoko and applying it to the net and the superscan. Now we could find her on the net. Then I set to work launching a return to the past. What would happen to the dead if I did this? A warning note had said the dead will not come back, but I never tested it. Well, here went nothing.

"Return to the Past, now!"

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