I apologize for the super-short chapters . . . I will try to make my later chapters longer.
Oh yeah . . . and I will not add more unless y'all READ AND REVIEW!
Enjoy!
Part 2: Jeremy
"So, what's for breakfast?" Odd said in between yawns as we joined the mile-and-a-half of kids that was the east breakfast line. The school had recieved a gigantic influx of new students this year and was well over capacity. The science building even had its own set of portable science labs!
"Probably that glop of goo the lunch ladies call scrambled eggs again," Ulrich answered, ending with a yawn of his own. "It looks like moldy cheese to me, and smells even worse. In fact, I'd rather eat one of XANA's monsters than that crap!"
Odd and Aelita cracked up at Ulrich's retort as the breakfast line moved slowly forward. It seemed to take ages just to make it halfway to the serving area. All the while my stomach rumbled, and I wondered if we were ever going to get breakfast. It was like Sissi was holding up this line the way she did the line for the girls' showers every morning. Once Aelita was late for class three days in a row because of her!
I didn't realize I had begun to doze off until someone poked me in the side and said, "Come on, Einstein, move up!" I jumped upright from a half-slump and realized that a majority of the kids had left the line due to impatience, and ran up as far forward as I could go. Three seconds later our trays were filled with moldy scrambled eggs and even moldier sausage patties.
We plopped down at one of the folding tables outside, our trays of mold coming down right in front of us. Naturally we all shoved the food aside, afraid that if we ingested it, we would catch some horrible disease or something. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was missing. I literally slapped my forehead with my hand when Ulrich put his finger on it for me.
"Hey . . . where's Yumi?" he asked suddenly, deliberately pushing his tray of mold to the floor.
"I don't know . . . " I trailed off and thought for a moment. "She hasn't been at school for three days now."
"Never mind that, we're gonna get detention for three days if we don't get to class on time," Aelita answered, checking her watch. I checked my own, and jumped at how much time had passed.
"Wow . . . Hey, I just remembered I left something in my room," I said, jumping up fast enough to send my chair flying backward into one of the girls at the adjacent table. "I'll meet you in class!"
The dorm building was unusually cold. Not that it wasn't normally cold — the building was air-conditioned and it was the middle of November — but it was colder than expected as I pushed open the stairwell door and started up the stairs two at a time. Three flights of stairs later I pushed open another door and stepped out into an even colder hallway. I broke into a full sprint down the hall, stopping only upon reaching my dorm room door.
Odd, I thought as I slowed to a stop, panting hard, I could've sworn I closed that door this morning. But lo and behold, the door stood wide open. Throwing the whole mystery of how that could've happened out the window, I ran inside to grab the notebook I'd left in here this morning. I found the green notebook laying on the bed, picked it up, and started out of the room.
And skidded to a stop when the beeping started.
It was a sound I'd heard many times before, a sound as familiar to me as XANA's monsters are to Yumi and the guys. It was the warning of an activated Tower.
That's impossible, I thought, Aelita defeated XANA last year, didn't she? Of course she had, otherwise Ulrich's grades would have been worse (not that they could ever get much worse); Odd's would have been straight zeros; and I would proabaly not be around to tell the tale. But then, how could my Super Scan program have detected a Tower?
I realized that I would be in big trouble if I were any later for class, and bolted out of the room without bothering to shut the door or shut off the computer.
"The weirdest thing happened to me just now," I said at lunch that day. Our trays this time were moldy enough to make our breakfast look fresh and homemade. I told the gang the whole story about the activated Tower on Lyoko and about how I had found my room door wide open when I was sure I had locked it that morning.
"Wait . . . didn't you shut down the Super Scan, Jeremy?" Odd asked when I had finished.
"Uh, yeah," I answered. "I shut down the entire supercomputer, actually."
"But how could your Super Scan work, then?"
"Somebody must've found the supercomputer and switched it back on. You know what? We should check out the factory tonight to see if anything's amiss."
Little did we know that the factory had a HUGE surprise in store for us . . .