Stacey's POV

I felt sort of bad not being there with them. Even with Morgan not watching, the maze seemed pretty dangerous. Not so much because there were monsters, because there were monsters everywhere, now. But...we usually avoided such dense concentrations of them. Plus there were wolves. We didn't usually have to deal with wild animals. Most of them stayed out of the way of everyone, retreating to...who knew where...to avoid being caught by humans or monsters. That, or the animals were dead. I hadn't seen many.

But, uh, no risk, no reward, so the saying goes. So there they were...the remaining Lyoko Warriors, about to go into a maze crawling with danger. They were doing it to rescue Aelita's dad, though. I got that...I would have done just about anything to see my dad again, and my mom...my brothers.

I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. I was being a spy right now. An emotional outburst would definitely give me away. I was back at the Factory, in the security room with all the monitors. This was Morgan's home turf, and I had to be really careful. I wanted to be there with them, help protect them, but they all agreed that I would be more useful here. So I watched the monitors with a walkie talkie in hand. There were Creepers along the perimeter of the maze. I could see inside the maze, and once they were in, I could easily guide them.

On the monitor, I could see it was the middle of the afternoon. "Under cover of darkness" didn't really work when your enemy most likely had some kind of night vision. So we might as well not get caught off guard by things that could see in the dark when we couldn't. Even though it was nice and bright outside, it was dark in here. Changing something in this room would...probably get attention. Plus, there was Emily to worry about. I doubted Morgan would send her spy to the maze. There were plenty of monsters to keep track for her. Sending Emily here wasn't out of the question, though.

It would have been a lot better if there was a way to disable the monsters from a distance...or cut the connection between them and Morgan. We didn't have the time to come up with the technology for that, though.

So I sat in the dark, staring at screens and waiting to whisper into a walkie talkie. Man, if I told me a year ago where I would be now...I would never believe it. Not in a million years. What a mess...

Are you in position?" Jeremie's voice crackling over the walkie talkie jolted me out of my thoughts. Compared to everything else, it sounded like...a really loud thing I couldn't think of a metaphor for. Fireworks maybe?

"Sure am, Einstein. I see you on the screen." I whispered. "Let's do this."

"What's it look like from your view?" Jeremie asked. I took a look at the monitor, just to make sure nothing changed or anything. Nope, still a ton of monsters...

"Creepers around the perimeter, a whole smorgasbord of monsters inside. None of them are all that huge. There are also wolves, two of them. They look restless."

It could have been a lot worse. There could have been the crab ones or the Megatanks. We were fortunate enough not to run into TOO many of those death balls. Seriously, these robots...these creatures...were ridiculous. They came out of a video game. The armies of the world went up against them, and so far, the monsters were winning. We could get out of this, though. That was what we were here to do today.

As a watched the Creeper line...I saw a gap. That was their chance to get in without having to fight the Creepers. The less possible damage they took, the better. They didn't go in with anything but very basic health supplies. It was just a couple bandages and some alcohol, in case of injury: plug up the hole and go. They were traveling light.

"There's going to be a blind spot in the Creeper line in a minute. I'll give you the signal. You'll only have a few seconds."

I watched for a few more moments, and then gave them the signal.

"Now's your chance! Go!"

And off they went. I traced the path to the center with my finger one more time, to make sure I had the right one. Then I pulled the walkie talkie close to my mouth, pressed the button, and spoke into it.

"Ok, you're going to want to make a left."

I watched them make a right.

"Guys, I said left." I said, a little louder. They kept going. It was like they didn't hear me at all. As they stopped and tried to talk into the walkie talkie, I realized that was exactly what was happening. There was some sort thing blocking our communication...maybe a feild that scrambled radio waves or whatever we were trying to communicate using.

Well...now my role was useless. What was the point of watching them in the maze from afar if I couldn't tell them anything about what I saw. My first thought was to go run to them...but no, they were far enough away that I wouldn't be able to catch them. Also, by the time I got there, I wouldn't know where they were anymore. So...what? I just sat there? I couldn't do that. We were at war here.

What could I do...what could I do...? The same thing I did the last time I was here...look for any sort of information I could get my hands on. I stared at the screens in front of me. Except for the maze, they showed a whole lot of nothing. There was one screen that showed what had once been Kadic, now leveled to the ground. There was Rengrade, a wreckage of a once sparkling corporate campus. There was an overview shot of Paris, mostly rubble, with monsters crawling around like so many ants. It was almost like Morgan was showing off her accomplishments. This was her trophy.

It was disgusting.

I pressed a few buttons. I heard some whirring somewhere else in the Factory...that wasn't right. Oh, there it was...there were a set of buttons labeled 'monitor 1-4 toggle.' They seemed to be arranged from left to right, just like the monitors. The maze was on monitor two, so I left that button alone and started toggling through monitor one. As I scrolled through this one...well...most of them showed only static with the word 'offline' in bright green lettering in the top left corner. That meant either the connection had been cut...or the cameras had been destroyed. I doubted Morgan would let her security cameras just turn off or something.

After four or five offline screens, I got to ones that depicted various places in the Factory, two of the Hermitage, which was still standing for some reason...There was even one camera that showed...the sewers? Why in the world would Morgan need to keep an eye on the sewers? Was there something important down there? There was a faint light glowing off one side of the screen...but I couldn't make anything else out...When I hit toggle again, it went back to the shot of Kadic. Maybe the other monitors would have something...

Nope, nothing with the sewers. I wasn't about to switch the second monitor. Looked like the guys were doing that keep to the right thing you do in mazes and weren't having too much trouble with the monsters yet.

The third monitor looked like it was mostly focused on important buildings. There were what I could only assume were capital buildings around the world, and business headquarters. I good amount of them were destroyed or fortified, being used as a shelter like Rengrade had been. The fourth monitor had overview shots of major cities and major ports. It seemed she had her eyes...everywhere...this whole world...No, I couldn't focus on that. What could I learn from this? There wasn't anything I could think of, except that maybe we could try checking out the sewers, see what was making the glow. it was a bit of a shot in the dark, but...

Uh...what else? We couldn't go in or out of the country without her knowing. We already knew that. I looked behind me...I didn't see anything physical that could be useful, just a bunch of empty room...Nobody was there, either. That was the other thing I needed to watch for. I was lucky enough not to get caught last time, but who knew what kind of eyes Morgan had on this place.

There were some other buttons. I pressed them but they didn't do anything. Old rusty surveillance room, this one was.

My eyes drifted back to the monitors. I saw Jeremie and Odd, Odd was easy to spot, even during the apocalypse the guy insisted on bright colors. He...was a certain kind of special, Odd. He supported everyone, in his way, even though I knew he was hurting, he kept the humor coming and kept trying and kept going. I admired him for that...Uh, anyways, as I was saying...Jeremie and Odd were together, but not Aelita. It only took me a second to find her, she was being chased by a wolf, and I think her hand...had blood coming out of it! Aelita was bleeding, did the wolf get her. Oh god...No, no they should not separate, that was a terrible idea! My eyes were glued to the screen now. I pulled out the walkie talkie and tried again to contact them, I got nothing but static.

What the hell was I supposed to do?

I watched Aelita run closer to the center, and Jeremie and Odd run closer to the entrance. Aelita reached the center before Odd and Jeremie reached the entrance, but the wolf was on her tail. When she stopped to look at Franz, the wolf got her and pinned her to the ground. Aelita..no...

Oh, she...she cut the wolf in the throat, a crimson ribbon of blood spat out from the wolf's neck and she pushed it off. She tried to go away, paused for a moment, embraced Franz...and he stabbed her.

Oh god...oh my god...Aelita...

At that moment, Jeremie and Odd made it out of the maze. With the beginnings of tears in my eyes once again, I snatched up the walkie talkie.

"Guys! It was a trap! Franz has Aelita he...he killed her-"

I felt something hit my head, a ripple, pressure...and I was knocked forward. What happened? That was all I could think as my vision went black, and I heard a voice...Emily's.

"I have Stacey. If you want her back, meet us at these coordinates."

Hope you enjoyed, leave a review I love hearing from you guys, and as always, have an awesome day!