Aelita's POV

There was no rest...Everything was happening so fast...

I let out a shuddery sigh. I had a blanket wrapped around me and a mug of hot chocolate in my hands. The people at Rengrade were very kind. They took Stacey into a more sterile room to take the bullet out and patch her up. They gave us sleeping accommodations and some food and water.

Dad...I was reunited with him for a moment, just to have him ripped away again. Taelia too...despite all she did she was still family. Now I truly had none left. None except Jeremie and Odd...and Ulrich was out there somewhere. Yumi and William...

Before I knew what was happening my face was wet with tears. So much loss in such a little time. I was surprised I had tears left to shed. The world was hurting, my world was hurting and it hurt me...

Taelia would have fit right in here. This was the world she was living in before it was a reality. She wasn't really being hunted down anymore. She didn't actually have to hide in the nooks and crannies of the world, afraid of everyone and everything. We...did. Her imagined reality had come true...She would have fit right in.

I wiped my eyes. At least we had some rest now.

It wasn't going to last. I knew it wasn't going to last. I tried to keep a brave face for everyone, but who was I kidding? It was already over. Yes, we had an EMP bullet now. If we could replicate it and mass produce it, we could probably take down a lot of the robots, and even maybe take down Morgan herself...but the damage was already done. If the rest of the world was anything like this...There was no coming back from this.

And besides. We kept having a faulty approach, and Jeremie knew it. We kept pinning our hopes on singular things. Stacey, Ulrich, Taelia, EMP bullets, the multiagent, even Kiwi...and every time Morgan found a way to destroy it. A way to destroy our hopes.

I doubled over, trying to find a way to keep it in or let it out or...I didn't know. I didn't know! I was useless now. Lyoko was wiped off the map. I couldn't deactivate a tower to make everything better anymore. I wasn't all that fast or strong. What was I good for? Sure, I had my smarts, but that hardly mattered now...A Megatank didn't care about my ability to do complex equations.

There was a hand on my head, gently patting my hair. I looked up.

"Mommy...?" My eyes were full of tears. I blinked to clear them. It was Jeremie.

"It's going to be ok, Aelita." Jeremie said, a smile on his face masking the pain in his own heart. Jeremie got us through so many tough situations before. I knew he would do his best to get us through this too. I wanted to believe he could do it. We could do it, us, together. And we had a lot more allies now. This was a pretty solid place as far as strongholds went. It had food and water and supplies. It had weapons, and it was defensible. It also helped that we were a considerable distance from Paris. Rengrade's European headquarters were actually in Switzerland. We had traveled a fairly long distance to get here. We did what we could to help Stacey before we left, but none of us knew how to remove a bullet safely.

"It's going to be ok?!" I spat, immediately regretting how forceful that sounded. Seriously, though, that was not what anyone wanted or needed to hear right now. "Sorry...I'm just..."

"I know." he said. "I brought you these." Jeremie handed me a box of tissues. I took one and wiped my eyes, smiling slightly at him. That was much better than any hollow words of encouragement...a small act of kindness. Humanity lived on small acts of kindness...

"They got the bullet- OH! Hey, am I interrupting your smooching session?" Odd walked in, he had a big grin on his face. I laughed a little and blushed a lot. When I looked over at Jeremie, he was blushing, too. How did Odd stay in such high spirits? Was it all an act? Or did he know something we didn't? Though, honestly, I wasn't sure what I would do without his sense of humor...he kept the rest of us up..

Oh god, was I relying on Odd? Did that mean he was going to die next? Oh god, oh no, not him, not him please, no more! No more! NO MORE!

"Um...Aelita?" Odd waved his hand in front of my face. "I know Einstein isn't the best kisser, but the idea isn't that scary, is it?" Odd asked. I couldn't get myself to respond. My thoughts were going so fast I couldn't catch up with them, and it made me freeze. Jeremie reached for my shoulder, but I slapped his hand away and jumped up. They both looked bewildered.

"I'm sorry." I walked out into the hallway and out of view of Odd and Jeremie.

It was quiet in the hallway...my muscles released some and I slumped against the wall, within earshot of the room I was just in, but unseen. I breathed deeply a few times, trying to get my body to calm down.

"No, let her. You can get her in a few minutes." I heard Odd say.

"I'm worried." Jeremie said. He sounded just a bit broken. There was a long pause.

"Me too." Odd said, his voice taking on a solemn tone she had only heard a few times in her life. "She's been through a lot, we all have. We just have to...I don't know."

"Keep going?" Jeremie suggested.

"Yeah..." Odd sighed, like that was supposed to be the right answer, but he wasn't sure if it was the right answer for him anymore. "Anyways, like I was saying before, they got the bullet out of Stacey. She's healing up now..."

Odd's voice faded into the distance as I walked away from them and towards the infirmary room where Stacey had been taken for her operation. I could at least make sure she was doing alright. She was sort of flung face first into this situation with us. She had adapted wonderfully...well, if you could call it wonderful to adapt quickly to the sort of life we were leading. I missed the double life from before. If I knew how this would turn out, I would have begged Jeremie to turn off the Supercomputer before it was too late, before I remembered myself, before he got anyone else involved, before Xana could do anything...

If I could have gone back, I would have shut everything down.

I knocked on the door where Stacey was supposed to be. For a few moments, there was nothing, but then Rob answered the door.

"Oh, hey Aelita. Is everything ok?" He asked. No, everything was not ok. But, I knew what he meant. Was there anything specific wrong about the accommodations that we had that he, as our host, could help with. The answer was no. Everything Rengrade was providing was more than they could ask for. Rob's dad, the CEO, was really generous, too. There were many people who needed a sanctuary, and Rengrade was happy...or at least willing, to provide. It wasn't sustainable, of course, and Rob had to know that. There was only so much space, so many supplies. Eventually they would have to start turning people away if they wanted to keep the people already here alive.

"I wanted to check on Stacey." I said.

"Oh." Rob scratched the back of his head and smiled sheepishly. "You can see her if you want, but she isn't awake yet. The doctors just got finished a few minutes ago. I was just going to take the bullet over to our weapons guys to take a look." Rob pulled a tightly sealed plastic baggy with a shiny silver bullet inside. The blood had been cleaned off of it. It was...it looked polished and cared for. There were only the six bullets, probably in existence right now. Taelia couldn't just keep buying bullets and making them into these kind. They must have been reused. A lot of care must have gone into these bullets...They were polished and had little blue things on the tip and in a band around it. Usually, the panels would be glowing. The glowing meant it was charged and active. This one was out of charge. It was nothing but a fancy looking bullet, right now.

Hopefully these weapons experts could figure out how they worked and create more of them.

"I'll be taking that." In a single instant a spectre using Morgan's voice yoinked the baggy with the EMP bullet out of Rob's hands and held him up by the throat. Both of us were too in shock to do anything about it. "You know, it's a shame you rich, arrogant, cynical little man. In another life, we might have been friends." And then the spectre promptly twisted his neck until it made a sickening crack, and Rob fell to the floor, limp.

I was going to be sick...

I didn't have much time to worry about him, though, because then the spectre turned to me, kicking me in the face. I crashed into the wall behind me, the the world faded.

"Aelita!" I heard Jeremie's voice. It pulled the world back. I blinked a few times, my eyes getting accustomed to the light again. Someone was shining a light in my eyes. It sort of hurt. "What's your name." Jeremie asked, even though he just said her name. They were...trying to check if I had a concussion. Oh, that was right, I got smashed into a wall.

"My name is Aelita...Schaeffer." It took me a second to cycles through my fake names for the real one.

"I think she's fine." That was the voice of a grown man. "Although it would be better to check with the equipment..."

I sat up slowly. We were no longer in the Rengrade building. It looked like we were in...an apartment? There were a few other people in the room as well, mostly just sitting around. Jeremie and Odd and Stacey were in here as well...

"What happened?" I asked. The guy who had been checking me out just pointed out the window. I looked out...the entire complex, it looked like...was burning. It was mostly destroyed, but it was still on fire.

There went another hope...

Why did I keep relying on things.

And Morgan killed Rob in front of me...

My body couldn't keep up with all of this. Everything hurt...

But I had to keep going...for them...for everyone

Not entirely sure where to jump from here, but I'll figure it out. Too bad about Rob, though.

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