Throughout the next few weeks, Antea stayed away from Calvin and his friends; she no longer wanted anything to do with Lyoko or anything of the sort. One day, in mid May, everyone but Antea was sitting at the same table for lunch. Dennis was the first to speak.
"Hey, guys." He said.
"Oh, hey Dennis." Sam said. "What's new?"
"Well, based on what has been translated so far, I was able to finish the translations that Jeremie had started on XANA's plan."
"So, what does it say?" Ami asked.
"It's really weird." Dennis said. "It says that throughout the year, XANA and his minions have been building scanners all over the world like the ones in the lab, only bigger. He plans on using them to materialize his monsters into the real world and destroy all of humanity."
"Didn't he do the same thing like three decades ago?" Sam asked. "Only with robots in a Russian military base?"
"Yes, but this time, he's made a program that allows his monsters to be immune to the elements of nature; common, human-made weaponry won't stop them."
"Oh my." Ami said. "When is this supposed to happen again?"
"XANA has predicted the scanners to be fully operational on June 30th at 22:30. But knowing XANA, it's probably an approximate guess; it could even be earlier."
"So that means we have to work fast now." Sam said. "But how do you plan on stopping it?"
"Well, all we really need to do is deactivate the last tower in the mountain sector."
"And that will be it?" Sam asked
"Not quite." Dennis said. "Even after that, the virus in Calvin's body will still be in him as long as XANA is alive, and like with Aelita, shutting down the supercomputer will kill him. Deactivating the last tower will just buy us enough time for me to make finishing touches on the ANAX Program, which will destroy XANA for good." Calvin spoke this time.
"And just how do you plan on doing that?" He asked. "In case you've forgotten, Antea no longer wants to help us."
"Well, over the weeks, I've been working on a program that can deactivate towers without the use of Antea. Unfortunately, it's still in the developing stages and it'll require a lot more work, so unless we convince Antea otherwise, we'll have to make do with that. But hopefully I'll get it done in time."
"That's good, I guess." Calvin said morosely as he continued eating. Dennis then turned to the rest.
"He's still not taking the breakup well, is he?" Dennis asked.
"Not at all." Sam said.
"Well, what do you expect?" Ami said. "Antea was the first person outside our family and Odd who truly understood him. You can't blame him for being upset."
"Well what about me?" Sam asked. "He's known me and Dennis for just as long."
"He hated me until the end of the season, and for the first month, he didn't want to be in the same room as you." Dennis said. "Now come on, we have class soon."
And with that, they left.
The next weekend in the afternoon, Calvin was walking down the hallway of the boys dorms when suddenly a black spectre came out from one of the outlets and flew in front of him. Calvin tried to run, but the spectre shot an electricity sphere and knocked him down, Calvin then passed out.
When he woke up, he found himself on the factory floor, his hands tied to a metal support beam behind his back. Just then, he saw someone or something emerge from the shadows; he recognized it as the polymorphic clone of Dennis XANA made during their last encounter.
"Hello, Calvin." XANA said.
"XANA." Calvin said. "What do you want?"
"I congratulate you." He said. "You've avoided my pitfalls, you've endured my many tortures, you've even uncovered my master plan even without Jeremie. Of course, even if you know all the details, you can't stop it. Especially with Antea gone."
"You leave her out of this!" Calvin shouted.
"So you still love her." He said. "Even though she hates you. You humans are such an enigma. Thankfully, this will help with my next move."
"What do you mean?" Calvin said.
"You see, I've already reached the final stages of my master plan and my victory over the war on humanity is at hand. However, just one thing stands in my way. One thing that can reduce me to nothing."
"The ANAX Program." Calvin said.
"Correct." XANA said. "I've tried reasoning with you, I've tried murdering you, but now you leave me no other choice but to give you one last chance: Forfeit the ANAX Program to me, or I kill one of your friends at random."
"You would rather do that then kill me?" Calvin asked.
"It's just a social experiment: Every day where you don't hand over the program, I kill a friend of yours at random. At 24 hours after the first death, I target and kill another, and so on until you surrender the program."
"And what will that prove?"
"That you are willing to endanger your own friends' lives just to stop me in the simplest way possible. And when the rest find out that you let one of your own die do to your stubbornness, they will hate you. And even if they don't, the guilt will still overcome you until you suffer as well. The only thing I prefer over my adversaries dying in my own hands is my adversaries drowning in their own guilt and emotional torture."
"You're mad!" Calvin said. "Your plan will never work; I'm stronger than you think!"
"Are you?" XANA said as he disappeared. "You have 24 hours, think about it. I await to see your reaction when your first friend dies at the hand of your ignorance."
The ropes around Calvin's wrists then fell loose and he ran back to the academy. After a while he ran into Dennis and the rest at the rec room and he told him everything.
"So XANA's going to kill one of us if we don't give him the program?" Dennis said.
"That's right." Calvin said. "We have 24 hours to find a way to prevent the first death."
"How are we going to do that if we don't know who is first?" Sam asked.
"I already have an idea on who he's going to target first: Antea." Calvin said.
"How do you…?"
"XANA's smart, but he's not perfect." Calvin interrupted. "Think about it, Antea's the only one who can deactivate the towers, without her, we're stuck with Dennis's program."
"Of course." Dennis said. "Calvin, you're a genius."
"Well, what are we going to do?" Sam asked.
"Just wait 24 hours, we have to strike just as he's about to attack."
The next day on Sunday afternoon, everyone was waiting anxiously in Calvin's room looking at the clock.
"So what's the plan again?" Sam asked.
"XANA gave the ultimatum at 12:14 P.M. yesterday. I know this because it was 12:20 when I got to the rec room and it took me 6 minutes to get from the factory to there. Anyways, at 12:13, we call Antea and tell her to come to the factory and she'll arrive before XANA can do anything."
"Sounds like a good plan." Sam said.
"Heads up." Dennis said. "I've got 12:13." Calvin then pulled out his cell phone and hit Antea's number on speed dial. After three rings she picked it up.
"Hello?" She asked.
"Antea, it's Calvin. Listen, stop what you're doing and get to the factory immediately."
"Calvin, we've been over this." Antea said. "I'm not setting foot on Lyoko anymore."
"I'm not asking you to set foot on Lyoko!" Calvin asked. "XANA's going to kill you in one minute. Get out immediately and get to the factory!"
"How do you know?" She said.
"You just gonna have to trust me!" Calvin said. Antea just sighed.
"Fine." She said. "I'll be right there."
"Good." Calvin said as he hung up. "Come on, we have to meet her there now."
Back on Lyoko, XANA was sitting in the blue sphere in his topographic map when he had overheard the phone conversation.
"You must think I'm pretty stupid, right Calvin?" He said. "You obviously don't know what I'm capable of doing."
Meanwhile, Calvin and Dennis had reached the factory bridge when they saw Antea running towards them.
"Antea, over here!" Calvin shouted. Antea was about to run over to them when Dennis saw something that caught his eye.
"Hey, what's that?" He asked. Calvin turned around and saw a black cloud emerge from one of the nearby abandoned buildings. Calvin took a closer look and saw that it was a swarm of bats that have used the building as their home, and they were flying towards Antea. Calvin then ran up to her as the bats were surrounding her. He then grabbed a large stick and started swinging at them. But they just dodged him and continued to swarm around Antea. The bats then started latching on to her and biting her; she then fell to the ground and hit her head on the pavement and fell unconscious. Calvin then ran up to her and picked her up.
"C'mon Antea, wake up!" He said. "C'mon!"
"I'll call the hospital." Dennis said.
"No. That'll take to long." Calvin said. "The hospital's only a few blocks down. I can run down there and save a trip, you just tell the rest to meet me there."
"Alright then." Dennis said as Calvin ran off.
Ten minutes later, Calvin had arrived at the hospital and came to the front desk.
"Can I help you?" The nurse asked.
"My friend is seriously injured." Calvin said exhausted and anxious. "Can you help her?"
"How bad?" The nurse asked.
"Just get someone to help her!" Calvin shouted.
"Alright, just hold still." She said. She then called over a few doctors and within seconds they came and carried Antea into the emergency room. The nurse went over to Calvin.
"You just wait over here." She said pointing to the waiting room. "Someone will tell you more momentarily."
Within an hour, Sam, Dennis, Aelita and Ami came to the waiting room with Calvin. Just then, one of the doctors came in.
"Calvin Stern?" He said.
"Over here." Calvin said walking up to him.
"Is she going to be okay?" Sam asked.
"Antea's suffered a concussion and is in a coma." The doctor said. "You were very lucky to bring her here so quickly."
"No." Calvin said extremely worried. "She's not gonna die, is she?"
"At this rate, she only has a 50% chance of pulling through; she took quite a fall." He said. "But we'll do everything we can."
"Calvin, you don't ask if someone's going to die when you're in a hospital." Sam said.
"But you asked if she was okay." Calvin said.
"That was an optimistic question."
"Let me see her." Calvin said to the doctor. "I want to talk to her."
"I'm afraid I can't…"
"Please, let me see her!" Calvin said trying to get past him.
"Sir, if you keep this up, you're going to have to…"
"God dammit, just let him see her!" Dennis said. "It's not like it's in your code of ethics or something."
"Fine." The doctor sighed. "Room B32."
"Thanks." Calvin said as he walked down the halls. When he got to Antea's room, he found her lying unconscious on the hospital bed with bandages around her head. He went up to her and held her hand.
"I'm sorry, Antea." He said trying not to cry. "I'm sorry about dragging you into this mess, I'm sorry about your father, and I'm sorry for putting you here. I am so sorry. Just please don't die, Antea."
He then wrapped his arms around her and put his head to her chest.
"I need you." He said as a tear slid down his face. (A/N: Just like 'Cold War').
In a short time, he came back to the waiting room with his head hanging down. Aelita then went up to him.
"Be strong, Calvin." She said. "You just got to have faith."
Calvin just nodded his head and walked out. Everyone else just followed him and went back to the academy.
Man, as implausible as it was, it almost hurt writing this chapter, and the next chapter isn't going to be much, if any better.
Please Review.