Episode Eight : Communications Age

Soundtrack: The Police's "Contact" (Mostly for Jeremie)

Chapter Two: Caught in a Loop

Aelita leaned against the backrest of her swivel chair, kicking one leg of her desk with a pink-booted foot so she scooted several inches back. "Well," she said, "it does look like a virus. But-"

"It is," Kloe said dully. "I can… not remember exactly. Look." She stood up from the edge of Aelita's desk, frowning. "This bit-" she pointed to a string of code "-is so it can duplicate itself. This string will alter as it… I have no right to know any of it, but it's true. It's a virus to wipe the supercomputer."

Yumi shook her head. "No! That would be as bad as turning it off." She cast a self-conscious glance at Aelita.

"Hey, you wrote the same thing." Kloe spread her hands, palms flat in a placating gesture, then pressed her fingers to her forehead. "It needs to be shut down – now – because XANA is almost powerful enough to escape the supercomputer."

Aelita shook her head. "Impossible. XANA doesn't have anywhere to escape to. No other computer in the world could run a program that complicated."

Kloe dropped to the bed again, resting her chin on her hands. "That's it for me. Yumi?"

"Not even that much," the black haired girl muttered, "Maybe Jere-"

The door burst open suddenly to the shove of a brown-haired, grim-faced boy. "Yumi-" he began, then, "Aelita?"

"And me, chopped liver," Kloe added.

"But- Jeremie said you were trapped in Lyoko," the boy said, closing the door slowly behind him.

Aelita rose to her feet unsteadily. "I've been here all morning, Ulrich," she said earnestly, "If there's a trap, it's been set for Jeremie."

"Jeremie's in trouble?" Kloe's tone sounded slightly more hopeful then was appropriate under the circumstances. Nothing like a rescue to start an unlikely romance… Aelita cast her an incredulous look; Kloe tried to cover, rising to her feet and swiping her hands briskly over her jeans. "Right. We need to go help him, then. Come on. Oh, and someone call Sissi."

Aelita closed the program she had been peering at and clicked the machine into standby. "I'm ready," she said.

The four dashed out of the dormitory.

- - - -

Sissi hated having a class first period. Unfortunately, her father had run into some trouble getting her schedule changed, so it would be at least another week before she could start class at a more seemly hour. Originally, she had had every intention of cutting the class, which she never really seemed to get in trouble for, until she had realized that not only was Herve not taking this class, Odd and Ulrich were. Maybe she could bear it for another week.

Of course, Odd and Ulrich had decided not to show up today. Sissi slumped a little farther down in her chair, trying to avoid the teacher's eye. If she had to repeat the Pythagorean theorem one more time, she would scream! Her heavily mascara'd eyes flicked over to the empty desks again, and something in her brain went snick.

Odd and Ulrich were out. If she went to the precalculus class next door, where Herve was spending this period, Jeremie would probably be out as well. There could only be one reason Odd and Ulrich were missing at the same time: They were saving the world again. Without her.

Sissi's hand shot into the air.

"So 'b' squared is equal to what? Sissi?" The math teacher sounded mildly surprised.

"Can I use the bathroom?" Sissi shrilled.

The teacher relaxed. That made sense, then. "Go ahead. Theo, can you tell me what 'b' squared is equal to in this equation?"

Sissi managed to maintain a walk to the classroom door, but by the time she hit the grounds, she was sprinting.

- - - -

With a series of clicks and the hiss of released pressure, the intricate circular mechanisms on the weathered doors of the elevator unlocked and slid apart. Four students stepped out into the empty vastness of the computer room.

"Jeremie?" Aelita called, her breathy voice coming back in a series of stage-whisper echoes. Kloe was hardly a beat behind, calling out the same name in her lower, more sardonic tones. The two girls exchanged glances that should have struck sparks, leaving Yumi, peering past them, to state the obvious.

"He's not here." Her fierce voice ricocheted off the metal walls with the clang of impending doom.

Aelita walked over to the keyboard and rapidly typed several prompts. "He went into Lyoko," she said hurriedly, "And…" the next keystroke brought up a map. "XANA's activated a Tower! I have to-"

"You can't," Kloe interrupted, "You're the only other person who can operate the supercomputer. I'm not much use in the real world, so virtualize me and, uh, Ulrich, I guess. Yumi can stay here in case XANA launches an attack."

"Who put you in charge?" Ulrich growled, glaring at the blonde reporter, "We don't even know if we can trust you."

Yumi rested a hand on Ulrich's shoulder. "Unfortunately, she makes sense. But maybe I should go-"

"No, I'll go," said Ulrich, stalking over to the elevator and punching the button. "Come on." He jerked his head at the doors as they rotated and slid open. He and Kloe stepped in.

Aelita sat down in Jeremie's chair, slipped on Jeremie's earpiece, and brought up a pair of character cards from Jeremie's computer: Ulrich's samurai warrior and Kloe's British army officer. It was almost ironic, this reversal of roles – Jeremie floundering in Lyoko while she tried not to sink in the complexities of Earth. He had worried she might not like him any more when she was free of Lyoko; quite the opposite had proved true. "Jeremie, why do you have to do stupid things?" she murmured rhetorically.

"What?" asked Yumi, and,

"Sorry, did you say something?" came Kloe's voice, tinny, through the earpiece.

"Nothing," Aelita responded to both, "Scanner, Kloe. Scanner, Ulrich."

Kloe and Ulrich stepped into the golden pillars. "Transfer, Ulrich," stated Aelita, "Transfer, Kloe.

"Virtualization."

The mists of the mountain sector curled and broke as another pair of figures appeared above them, dropping onto ground made faintly purple by the light. "I put you in the same place Jeremie and Odd landed, or fairly close," Aelita's disembodied voice explained, "Can you see anything?"

Ulrich offered Kloe, who had landed flat on her face, as usual, a hand up. "No," he answered, then, "Wait. What's that?"

A faint amber glow was visible through the mist. Kloe, absently brushing some nonexistent dirt off her red and gold coat, looked up and took a hesitant step towards it. Ulrich held out a hand to stop her. "I'll go check," he said, then, "Supersprint!" He vanished into the mist, trailing a blur like the tail of a comet.

Kloe followed more slowly. The ground was littered with boulders, oddly smooth, and deep fissures, but it only took a few moments to catch up with Ulrich. He hadn't gone far.

A faintly glowing bubble, patterns of gold swirled across it like filigree and at least as wide as Kloe was tall, was suspended a foot or two off the purple-grey ground; three shadowy, humanoid shapes could be distinguished within. Ulrich had his hands pressed against it and an expression of despair on his face.

"Bad?" Asked Kloe.

"We've run into this before," said Ulrich. "It sure isn't good."

- - - -

Jeremie had seen this kind of trap from the outside before. He knew it was a sphere barely large enough to contain himself and Odd. But from the inside, it seemed well nigh infinite, a never-ending, featureless haze of golden light.

This wasn't nearly as surprising as the fact that he was conscious, though. From Aelita's description, she had blacked out when XANA had caught her in one of these. He seemed perfectly lucid.

Jeremie cleared his throat. "Odd?"

"Jeremie, is that you?" came his friend's nasal voice. A second later, a spike-haired silhouette appeared in the golden mist. "Hey, what are we standing on?" Odd emerged from the swirling amber, peering down at his shoes.

"Uh…" Jeremie looked down. The mist beneath his feet seemed no more substantial then that to either side of him. "Search me. Probably nothing – this place isn't made for humans like the rest of Lyoko is." There was something wrong with Odd's appearance, and after a moment, he realized what it was: although the other boy still had a purple feline tail, twitching with agitation, his paws had been replaced by normal hands, and his skateboarder's outfit by the pajamas he had gone into the scanner with. Jeremie gave himself a quick check – the pointy ears of his virtual avatar remained, but he was wearing his typical long-sleeved shirt and khakis. "To tell the truth, I'm not sure what's going on."

"Really?' said Odd, sitting down on the insubstantial ground and lacing his gloveless fingers behind his head. "Now you know how I feel all the time."

"I have a new sympathy for you," said Jeremie dryly, lowering himself to the pseudoground and drawing his knees up to his chest. "But I can't believe I fell for such an obvious trap!"

Odd muttered something that might have been, "I can."

"But that's the wonderful thing about you chivalrous types," said a new voice, echoing through the boundless golden mist, then gradually coalescing about a single source, a humanoid shape striding out of the fog. "You're so predictable! It's great." Features became distinguishable – it wasn't one of XANA's monsters, but a tall, black-haired youth whom Odd and Jeremie immediately recognized.

"Okay, I get the gloating thing," Odd sniped, "It's traditional. But why does XANA look like William?"

The older student looked down at the captives. "I don't think I'll tell you," said XANA with William's voice. "Your pink-haired friend was never in Lyoko, by the way. If you had bothered to call her – well, I would have jammed the signal. Never mind."

"So is that why William liked Yumi?" Odd continued, talking more to himself then the AI. "I never got that."

"If Aelita's free, she'll deactivate the Tower and get us out," Jeremie said fiercely, struggling to his feet.

"You're next line is, 'you'll never get away with this,'" Odd cued his friend, sighting down his wrist for a moment before apparently realizing his gloves were gone. "Ah, man."

"Naïve is the word, I think," said William. "But I'm afraid the only people who could get you out of this loop are the ones who are trapped in it. Rather ingenious, I thought. Shame you can't program from in here – or even touch the Lyoko code, for that matter."

"Yah!" Odd shouted, launching himself without warning towards William in a martial arts pose. Bereft of weapons, it was a futile attack; the other student merely stepped to one side and let Odd fall to the ground. "Your friends are here," he said as Odd crashed to the insubstantial ground, "I'll be back. And by the way? I've done a better job keeping Aelita safe then you ever could."

With that cryptic comment, XANA/William vanished into the mist. Odd grunted, pushed himself up, glanced around, and slumped. "I was this close."

"It wouldn't have done anything," said Jeremie, staring into the mist. XANA wants to keep Aelita safe?