She couldn't tell you how much time had passed. All she had become accustomed to was the constant darkness, with even the littlest flame of a candle burning her eyes if she so tried to look upon it. She knew not when the sun would rise or when it would set, when crickets were singing the songs of night time or when birds were alerting the world of morning. The only thing she knew was the never-ending darkness. The growling of her stomach begging for food, and the shivering of her fragile body as it begged for warmth. The ground was hard and uncomfortable, and her head ached relentlessly with dehydration and the pain from the previous attack.
The air was stale and dusky, as if she had been thrown inside of a basement that had suffered years of water damage. But still, she knew it wasn't a basement. It didn't really feel like a basement. Basements were part of homes, and this place was not homey at all.
There was another thing she had grown used to, as well: the same, strange woman that continuously snuck through the tiniest crack of the open gate and slipped inside little things like water and granola bars. Aelita wondered who she was, and more importantly, why she was helping her. It would seem that anyone acquainted with this… Agent "Zlo" would want nothing less than her own demise. But with this woman… it was different. The light would creep in from the hallways whenever she opened her door, and Aelita would lean over and try and get a peek of her features, but never to any avail. The woman's lengthy black hair always masked her face, and Aelita had yet to even see her eyes. All she saw was the mass of hair. The long, flowing locks that mimicked the color of a raven and still managed to shine beautifully as if Aelita were looking at moonlight from a midnight sky. It was the closest to the outside world she could get, at this point, and she even wondered how this woman managed to maintain such beauty even while being cooped up in this facility. Were there showers? Did she have a home that she went to at the end of each day? A family to care for? Did they know what she was doing, what she was a part of?
She nibbled on the granola bar that had recently been thrown into her cell, usually breaking off half immediately and then saving the rest for later. She never knew when the woman would come back; if at all, and so she was vigorously saving every last crumb. It was dry and bland, crumbling apart inside her mouth and almost painful to swallow if by chance the woman had refrained from bringing water with her. All the while, though, it was better than nothing. And when the lady stepped inside her cell, there was something about her that emitted a friendly vibe. Something that almost brought warmth into the icy aura of her cage. Something that whispered to Aelita, "I'm here."
But the reality was that there was no one there. She was entirely alone. She wondered where her friends were. If they were trying to find her, if the school even knew she was gone. But such thoughts were quickly erased and marked off as foolish—of course they were. She knew very well her friends would do anything for her. She knew that they'd come find her soon enough, no matter how impossible it seemed.
And all the while, she couldn't help but think of XANA as well. If he had attacked during her disappearance, and how they planned to stop such attacks. Aelita was the only one who could deactivate the towers, and without her around, well… there was nothing that could be done.
What if this entire thing was all one big ploy of XANA? What if she were trapped in a sort of replika, surrounded by spectres? What if everything she saw was merely a virtual creation of XANA? It would explain why he had been so seemingly dormant for the past months—because he had been plotting something bigger.
There was never an entire week where XANA took hiding. So the fact that they had so suddenly gone over two months without action from him made her nervous. Chills crept up and down her spine, but she was quickly pulled out of her violent collection of thinking when the think, chamber door was forced open before her again.
Was it the woman? No, the woman never opened the door this far. And she also never brought her entire body into the room like that. Aelita sighed, she knew who it was.
"You again?" She smirked, risking her own safety with such retorts. At this point, though, she only half cared.
"Mouthy as usual, I see," Vuk replied with a hint of pride and also anger in his dense voice. "Come on," he orders, extending his arm as he led her out of the door. They continued the same path or rough flooring that scratched at her feet until it faded into the smooth, solid laminate. The dimly lit halls morphed into vibrant, humming lights and she had to force herself to squint and stare mostly at the floor. No matter whether or not she looked; Vuk had his hand firmly gripped on her bony shoulder the entire walk to hold her back in the attempt she strayed elsewhere.
He opened another door, the familiar tapping of his thick fingers against the keys before the positive beeping as the door clicked open. Leading Aelita inside the same, cramped room she had been in previously, he forced her into one of the chairs where she leaned back and folded her arms.
"Are we really going to do this again?" she whined. Vuk chuckled, pulling on the string that dangled from an overhead light bulb, with the soft light clicking on and causing Aelita to grunt in slight pain as she hid her eyes in the corner of her elbow.
"You'll get your freedom when you tell me what I want to know."
Freedom? The term echoed hopefully inside her head, but reality swatted it away. "Define freedom," she ordered. Aelita wasn't silly enough to believe he'd let her go that easily. Vuk recognized this, and followed her demand with another, casual laugh.
"I considered letting you go once I got what I wanted, but…" he tapped his rugged fingers against his lips, a smirk crawling beneath them. "You've already proved I can't really trust you."
"You've already taken all that you can. I'm not sure what else you want from me."
"I want answers. Tell me about your father."
"He's dead." That was the correct assumption after all, wasn't it? Whoever this man was—this, Franz Hopper—hadn't been heard of doing anything other than creating the supercomputer and Lyoko. Aelita knew he went to Lyoko with her—but she also knew he didn't come back with her.
"Dead?" he mocked, slamming his fist onto the table so fiercely that it sent vibrations across and through Aelita's brittle body. She cringed at the overbearingly loud sound that pounded throughout the room. Was that really necessary? "Last time I checked—you had disappeared off of the face of the Earth, along with your father. Now you're back again. But where is he?"
"I told you," she replied amongst a whisper. "He's dead."
"You seem awfully concerned about that," Vuk sarcastically scorned.
Aelita groaned, holding back words through her gritted teeth. The more Vuk demanded from her, the more her mind went haywire. She attempted to calculate all of the possible consequences. What worse could they really do to her? What would he even do with the information she provided? What if she couldn't even possibly give him what he wanted—what if the answers he desired were ones she simply didn't have? She was still trying her best to even put the pieces together herself. No memory of her life before Lyoko, no recollection of her parents or any pre-existing family…nothing but taunting nightmares and hallucinations, and journeys to the Hermitage that gave nothing less than useless, subtle hints.
"Speak."
"Augh!" Aelita screamed, bashing her puny fists against the dense metal of the table in front of her. "My father built the supercomputer! He built the supercomputer, he built Lyoko, and he built XANA—everything inside of it. It was all his work. Lyoko is the virtual universe inside of it, and XANA is an artificial intelligence—an evil one at that. He also built scanners, scanners that can take people to Lyoko. He took both him and me there, and that's when we 'disappeared.'" She stopped her ramble, heavily panting with the anger that coiled inside of her as she glanced upwards at Vuk and the smug grin on his face.
But the smug grin was quickly replaced with a disappointed frown. "I already knew all of that," he spat. "I want to know why it's there. And why did he take you, such a little girl, to a virtual universe? Hmm? What was his plan? Your father was up to no good, child. The answers I want are what his motives were."
"But—but…" And now, the only thing Aelita felt was pure terror. She didn't know what his plan was. She certainly didn't know why she ended up on Lyoko…just that somehow, she did. And it was because of her father that she did. It was official, then—Aelita didn't have the answers Vuk sought, and so she couldn't convey him even if she wanted to. More than likely, it was over for her.
The two sat in silence for a long, agonizing moment. The soft buzzing of the light bulb filled the tension in the room, while Vuk plotted in secrecy and Aelita desperately tried to figure out what it was that could be coming. He turned his chair around so that he was now facing the mirror that took up the entire wall. Feverishly, he sneered—as if he were directing his grin at someone behind the mirror.
"Those French Alps," he mumbled. "That you were living in." Aelita looked up and whimpered. Was she? Aelita didn't know where she did or didn't live before Lyoko. Her head was starting to ache from the vast amount of confusion being thrust at her. "That silly little house surrounded by woods. Why would your father choose to live in a house like that… with such a little girl around. Everyone knows that the woods are full of wolves."
Aelita winced, her fingers gripping the edges of her chair. Howling into her ears, she could hear the faintest sound of a wolf's cry. For her, the worst kind of sound. She shut her eyes, refusing to further look at the evil man before her.
He noticed her reaction, and he knew what she was thinking and even hearing—and it pleased him. For him, this would be the appropriate method of torture. A punishment for not giving him what he desires. A trigger, if you will. "Why is it that you are afraid of wolves, Aelita?" He emphasized her name—it being the first time he had addressed her by her first name, instead of simply "Ms. Schaeffer."
"I don't…" she trailed off, with growls and continuous howling thriving inside of her mind. "I don't know…"
"And I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!" Franz recited from the book in his hands as he watched his little girl pull the covers up to her nose, trembling behind the thick sheets. "It's just a story, dear," he attempted to console as he tousled her hair. "Would you like me to stop?"
"No!" she pouted, dropping the blanket back down to her lap. Franz smiled down at her, before continuing the story.
"Mommy, there are strange men outside," Aelita pranced over to her mother, tugging on her pant legs as Anthea rushed to the window and looked outside. Leaning down to her daughter's height, she whispered against her tiny ear with urgency.
"Aelita, what do the little pigs do when the bad wolf comes to their house?"
"They hide," she innocently replied.
"Right," Anthea replied with a nervous smile on her face. "And that's what you need to do. Go, hide!" She pushed her daughter away, urging her to run to the nearest place of secrecy she could come across.
"Aelita, these men are like wolves. When you see them, you need to run. Do you understand?"
"Yes, mommy."
Aelita sat in her chair with her head buried against the table, and her hands clenched into firm fists. Tears pooled into the corners of her eyes before making their way down her cheeks, and Vuk continued to stare at the mirror with his smile only growing.
Images of snow and trees flashed inside of her head—memories of building a snow man as a child. Memories of that little house in the Alps, and memories of her parents graciously watching over her as the ask her to stay near the house. And Aelita wished she had stayed near the house, too—away from the woods, away from the wolves.
The wolves that peered out of the depths of the trees and glowered at her, urging Aelita to look towards her mother and see that she was no longer there. Forcing her to look over and see her mother being thrown into a van, forcing her to see her father desperately running after it.
And then at that moment, Aelita realized there were no wolves that day.
There were only the men, dressed in black.