Episode Four : The Birds

Soundtrack: All American Reject's "Move Along."

Chapter Two: Chiaroscuro

Kloe was pulling her flash drive out of the supercomputer when she heard the mechanisms of the elevator disengaging. "Light…" she muttered. Sissi had produced a small pink notebook and a pen topped with a feather from somewhere unknown and was copying code into it, although what good that would do only Sissi could know. She almost dropped both pad and pen as Kloe grabbed her wrist and yanked her behind one of the large metal structures. "What?" Sissi squeaked, but the reporter shushed her and peered around their hiding place.

The elevator doors opened, and pink-haired Aelita stepped out. She looked tense, concerned as she walked across the color and took a seat at the computer. There was a black earpiece next to the keyboard; she tucked it into her ear, gingerly pulling a long, pink earring free. "Yumi, are you in the scanner room?"

The two eavesdroppers couldn't hear Yumi's reply, but Aelita shook her head. "No symptoms yet, but I could still be contagious. It's better if I virtualize you before I come down." She tapped at the keyboard. "I think the Tower is in the forest sector. I'll send you in as close as possible." Tap, tap. A picture of a girl in a kimono and face paint popped up. "Scanner, Yumi."

Somewhere buried in the back of Kloe's head, the words had an echo: Jeremie's voice, made tinny by intercom, uncertain. "Scanner, Kloe." Bright light shining from underneath, a strong updraft disarraying her hair.

"Transfer, Yumi," said Aelita. Black and red tunnel, no sensation. Kloe blinked away the impossible memories, but she whispered the next word along with Aelita.

"Virtualization."

- - - -

Odd sat on his bed, wrapped in a blanket and shivering. Kiwi lay at his feet, prone and unmoving except for the rise and fall of his ribcage; before Odd had begun quaking too hard to get an accurate measurement, the dog's breathing had been shallow, his heartbeat erratic. Ulrich was lying down in Jeremie's bed, asleep or faking it very convincingly, and Jeremie was at his computer, which was currently running split-screen. The left half showed a news report, a pristine anchor narrating over a series of disturbing images. "It seems the world's next epidemic may be beginning in France today as more and more people check into hospitals with a fever and persistent cough… Doctors are treating the symptoms and attempting to isolate the cause… first case was reported less then two hours ago… seems to have originated from a flock of migratory birds…" The right half was hooked up to the Internet and showed the close-spaced text of a medical journal; Jeremie was skimming through this with an occasional break as he was wracked with a coughing fit.

Finally, he muted the news report and swiveled in his chair to face his friends. "What have we got, Einstein?" Quipped Odd weakly through chattering teeth. He had sweat beading on his forehead despite his shivers.

Jeremie coughed. "It's definitely a virus," he began hoarsely, "I think it might be a particularly virulent strain of influenza."

"My dog is dying from the flu?"

"Not exactly," Jeremie elaborated, pausing to cough, then picking up again. "XANA mutated the virus, and may still be affecting it – it's more rapid and deadly then should normally be possible. Influenza in general is only fatal to people with immune systems that are already weak, but this strain… well, judging by Kiwi we have less then an hour before we fall into a catatonic state. After that, our chances of survival are slim at best."

It was a measure of Odd's state that he didn't ask Jeremie to define 'catatonic.' He pulled the covers up to his chin and settled back against the wall. "No problem. Aelita can deactivate a Tower in five seconds flat. You do a return to the past and we're all back to normal."

Jeremie peered through his glasses at his friend miserably. "Not necessarily. Remember the ghosts in the return-to-the-past function?" He waited for Odd's nod. "Unless we find a cure for the virus at this end, we might just take it back with us!"

He closed the news window and pulled up a new program in its place. "Speaking of Lyoko…"

- - - -

The elevator doors released Aelita into the scanner room, where one of the gently glowing tubes stood invitingly open. The pink haired girl walked briskly but somehow reverently across the room, stepping in as though treading on sacred ground and turning to face the doors as they slid shut, closing her inside. The scanner filled with creamy light; she shut her eyes and tilted her head upward as a sudden strong updraft lifted her unnaturally colored hair into a halo of fluff. Then, a sensation of weightlessness, of masslessness, as every atom was converted simultaneously to computer code…

An elf clad in green and pink landed lightly, easily on the forest floor.

Aelita very much liked Earth. It was a constant symphony of the unexpected, sights and sounds and smells that could never be duplicated in numbers. But Earth had just… happened. There was no sense of order, of purpose. It was too unexpected at times, and the delightful surprises could easily become a random, chaotic jumble. When she started feeling like that, there was nothing to do but edge closer to Jeremie and try to block it out. No one really belonged on Earth – at least, not like she fit here, in Lyoko, as if the world had been built around her. And on Earth, despite all the senses gained, there was one she lost: the indescribable intuition of the underlying code.

As she rose effortlessly to her feet, the little elf felt something thud through the code, rhythmic and red – or at least, that was the closest she could come to describing it with the vocabulary of the normal five senses. It was power being drawn, or numbers rearranging, or Earth being interfered with, or something. Jeremie probably knew; all she knew for certain was it meant somewhere, nearby, a Tower was active.

Aelita spun around slowly, until she was facing the direction of the pulsations. A long path lined with trees stretched over the mists of the virtual void; she hadn't landed as close to the Tower as she would have liked. And where had…

Something buzzed through the code, a disturbance so minute she almost missed it under the steady thudding of the pulsations. The elf ducked just in time; a laser streaked over her head. She tracked it backwards with her eyes to its point of origin, a pair of buzzing green frolions hovering like enormous mechanical wasps off to her left, stingers trained on her.

A brightly colored disc of perforated metal sheered, screeching, through the air. Behind Aelita, someone shouted "Hiya!" as a second fan was loosed. Both struck home, and the monsters dissolved into their component parts. Yumi snatched her weapons out of the air, folding them shut with well-practiced flicks, and tucked them into her yellow sash. "Well, you took your time," she stated dryly, smiling.

Aelita shrugged and pointed down the path. "The Tower's that way."

"Take a right at the first T-bend," came a voice from the air, so familiar Aelita almost failed to notice the incongruity.

"Tha- Jeremie?"

"Yeah! My laptop is networked to the supercomputer. I can't do much, but at least we can talk."

Aelita smiled. An intersection of paths came into view before her; she and Yumi took the right fork. "We should make it to the Tower in no time, then," she enthused, "Then return to the past and…"

"Uh," Jeremie broke in, and from his hoarse voice she could already tell it was bad news. "About that return to the past?"