Michael was about ready to climb the walls. He paced the room, searching once again for some way, any way out. Once again, he could find nothing, nothing but an opening above the massive computer structure that was far beyond their reach and the elevator, which he had already tried half a dozen times.
"Stop it," Ivy said quietly. She had not moved or spoken in the past ten minutes but sat with her back to the wall, seeming to make herself as small as possible. Michael gave a grunt of frustration and went over to try the elevator again. Nothing happened. As Mr. Belpois had informed them when he had ushered them in here, they had disabled the elevator from the floor above. Ivy and Michael were trapped.
Michael spun around, advancing on Ivy instead to vent his frustration. "This is all your fault you know," he snarled.
"My fault?" Ivy repeated back to him incredulously. "You're the one who wanted to follow them in the first place!"
"Yeah well you're the one who sold us out!" he retorted. "If you'd kept your mouth shut we might have had something to bargain with!"
"You have a lot of explaining to do," Mr. Belpois told them gravely. Michael had never considered Mr. Belpois a very intimidating man, but in that moment he admitted to himself that perhaps he had misjudged him. Something about his expression - the one of mixed anger, determination, and perhaps even a little fear - made Michael's insides turn to jelly. He was surprised that his voice did not shake when he replied.
"You have to explain everything first," he demanded. "What just happened to us? What is this place, why are you here, and -"
"Michael," barked Jeremie, cutting him off. Michael's voice deserted him. The man that Michael had dismissed only just this afternoon was gone, and the man before him was transformed, burdened with some terrible purpose. "I need you to tell me why you were here. What you have seen. If you have been here before tonight. I need you to to tell me. Now."
Michael gulped and opened his mouth, searching for something to say, but it was Ivy's voice that answered. "In class," she began, "when Michael's iPhone went haywire… I saw something. A symbol or something. It made me curious, so I followed you - well, I followed Michael - to your house and we saw you leaving… and then you came here."
The boy made a slight noise, glaring daggers at Ivy. He could not believe that she had just told Jeremie everything. "That's the story, right, Michael?" Mr. Belpois asked him. Michael's jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth and looked away. Mr. Belpois sighed and returned his attention to Ivy. "How did you get in?"
"The elevator," Ivy explained. "We climbed down the shaft. The keypad is - "
"Broken, I know." Jeremie waved an impatient hand. "And how did you get to Lyoko?"
"Lyoko?" Ivy sounded confused. Michael did not look at her.
"The place where you were," Mr. Belpois explained patiently. "The desert."
"I don't know. I don't know. We were in these tubes and suddenly they closed and then we were just…" She gave an ineffectual gesture.
"I thought it was supposed to be a dry run, Jeremie," the woman with the dark hair interjected. Michael avoided looking at her, too. He had the feeling she could take him apart if she so chose, and had no desire to cross her.
"Well, obviously, it wasn't," Mr. Belpois - Jeremie - said, pushing up his glasses to rub a hand over his face. "This is all such a mess."
A brief silence fell, in which Ivy added in a small voice, "And then those things came and started shooting at us."
"Bloks," the man with the spiked blonde hair said now. "They're called… ah…" He was silenced by the stares of the other four members of his strange little group.
Another pause. "That's it, is it?" Mr. Belpois prompted. "That's all you can tell us?"
Michael stole a glance over at Ivy long enough to watch her give a little nod.
"Okay." Mr. Belpois noded back, a troubled expression on his face. "Okay. I guess now all that's left is to decide what we are going to do with you."
"Michael, I'm sorry I told them everything, okay?" Ivy said, crossing her arms. "I was just stressed out and there were five of them. I didn't know what to do, so I just did what I thought was best."
Though he could not bring himself to forgive her completely, the boy recognized the logic in her argument. He also could not deny their circumstances, and that fighting would do them no good right now. His anger ebbed, and with it his energy. He leaned against the wall next to the elevator and slowly slid down to sit, just as Ivy was, and stare at his hands. "You don't think they'll hurt us, do you?" he asked quietly, unable to keep the fear out of his voice.
"No," Ivy assured him at once. "Someone would miss us."
Upstairs, the group of five adults were arguing intently on how to proceed with the two students downstairs.
"I don't get why we need to have this discussion. It's not like we can make them forget or anything. They're in the supercomputer already." Odd put forth with a shrug.
"We can change what we tell them," replied Ulrich. "There is no great way out of this, but we could make up a story. Tell them it's a government project or something. Top secret."
"And to be fair, it was a government project," Odd agreed, nodding. "Okay, fine, I can see us being able to cook up something if we have to. Why is that a better option, though?"
"Because we can't let anyone else get involved," Yumi interjected. "We can handle this on our own. We beat XANA before and we can do it again."
"Yeah, but we missed something," Jeremie said darkly from his usual seat in the computer chair. "I missed something. And you, you didn't believe me." He could not keep the note of accusation from creeping into his voice.
"Jeremie, can you blame us?" sighed Ulrich. "You've been going on about this for years, how he's going to come back. We just thought, well…" He cast Jeremie an uncomfortable look, which Jeremie returned with stony indifference.
"We didn't want it to be true, either," Aelita added quietly. "We wanted it to be over. We've all moved on with our lives, Jeremie… To have to do that all over again… I still have nightmares."
"You think I don't?" Jeremie replied angrily. "I have them all the time. You know that, Aelita. Which is why we need everyone to fight, so we can make sure that we don't lose this time, and so we can get rid of XANA for good this time. I don't like this any more than you guys do, but we have to face the facts. They are a part of this now, and we have to accept that."
"Doesn't inducting new Lyoko warriors have to be a unanimous vote?" Yumi asked. "I vote against. We should stop discussing this and start trying to figure out what to tell them."
"The situation changed when they were scanned into the supercomputer," countered Jeremie coldly. "It's majority rules."
Yumi's eyes flashed dangerously. "Funny, I don't remember electing you the leader."
"Hey, let's just all take a second to calm down here," Odd said, holding up his hands. "We're all friends here, right?" He smiled ingratiatingly at first Yumi, then at Jeremie. "Riiiiight?" he repeated when he received no reaction.
Yumi let out a big sigh and gazed at Jeremie with something akin to helplessness. "They're just kids, Jeremie."
"So were we," he replied firmly.
"And you don't see a problem with that?" Jeremie blinked, turning to Aelita. Her hands were clenched and she was shaking very slightly. "You don't think that being involved in this as children has affected our lives negatively? We're all still here, Jeremie. We thought this was over for ten years, but we're all still here because we can't get away from it."
"Except William," Odd added quietly.
"Maybe William had the right idea," said Aelita.
Jeremie gaped at her as if she had uttered some foul blasphemy. "Aelita, this is our responsibility. We can't just leave. XANA will kill everyone. Besides, what about your father?"
"I know that, Jeremie. I know," Aelita replied a little sadly. "I will carry that with me until the day I die. But don't you see, that is why it can't be their war, too. We can't do this to them."
Ulrich had been quiet for quite some time, watching with a brooding expression. Now he spoke up. "We already have," he pointed out grimly. "Not on purpose, of course… But Odd was right from the beginning. They're already in the supercomputer. We can't make them forget, and XANA is going to attack any time now. There's no guarantee we could figure out how to make them forget, or how to kill XANA, anytime soon. XANA could find out who they are, and he will target the school again because you are working there, Jeremie. All we're really voting on here is if we give them a chance to fight it, or to watch their world crumble again and again without understanding why."
There was a long, heavy silence. At last, Jeremie broke it. "Time to put it to a vote."
The elevator rumbled to life. Michael scrambled to his feet, heart in his throat, and backed away from it to stand closer to Ivy. For as much as he had been hoping to get out of here, now that it was actually happening he was petrified. The two women were the ones who came to get them this time. The dark-haired one was looking sour and sullen. The one with the pink hair, on the other hand, smiled at them a little, perhaps noting Michael's fearful expression.
The pair of students were ushered into the elevator where they rode once again up to the lab. The atmosphere was noticeably different this time. There was still tension, this much was clear. The Japanese woman was ignoring the man with the dark brown hair pointedly, and Belpois looked more tired than ever. However, the feeling of barely contained panic was gone, and in its place was grim resolution.
"Sit down," offered the man with the strange hair, offering them a much more broad smile and patting the floor near him as an invitation.
Michael and Ivy exchanged a brief look, then sat down obediently, looking expectantly at Mr. Belpois. Instead, it was the dark-haired young man who spoke. "We are going to tell you everything that we know.
oOo
It was nearly four AM. Michael and Ivy rode in silence. Jeremie had insisted that he take his students back to the school. Though he would never have admitted it, Michael was glad of it. The events of tonight coupled with the lateness of the hour had utterly drained him. Ivy, it seemed, had fallen asleep. Michael would have liked to follow suit, but his mind was buzzing with everything he had just heard.
A killer virus, a virtual world… It all just seemed too strange to be real, but too detailed to be fabricated. They had told them stories, and while before he might have dismissed them as an elaborate prank of a group of insane individuals, he could not deny what he had seen and experienced. Now they were expected to help, to fight against this XANA, a being that the members of the group ('Ulrich, Odd, Yumi, Aelita,' he mentally rehearsed) had gone to great lengths to illustrate was very dangerous. They had promised to train both himself and Ivy, but Michael remained doubtful that either of them could do anything to help fight this thing.
The car stopped. "Alright, you two," Jeremie said, turning to the two in the back seat. "Get inside. Make sure that no one sees you. And remember, don't tell any-"
"Tell anyone. I know, I know," Michael interrupted. "You only said it about a hundred times." He opened the door, got out, and slammed it shut without another word, very grateful to be free again. He hastened away from the vehicle, then paused, wanting to make sure that Ivy got out safely as well. She appeared a moment later, looking slightly surprised to see him still there as Jeremie's car pulled away. They looked at each other for a second or two, neither of them knowing what to say in light of tonight's events. Finally, Michael grunted vaguely and turned his back on her to half-walk, half-jog toward the dormitories and his waiting bed.
"Hey. Get up." Michael groaned as he was prodded in the ribs.
Michael cracked one eye open. "Whacha want?" he asked groggily.
"You need to get up," said the boy with blonde hair simply.
"Don wanna. Ditching today. Mental 'ealth. G'way," Michael mumbled, burying his head in his pillow.
"Uh-uh. If I let you go back to sleep every time I heard that, you'd never go to school." Lucas yanked the covers off Michael's bed.
"Go away," Michael repeated, though now it was no use anyway. He was really awake now. With a sigh, Michael sat up and glared at his roommate. "You're a real pain, you know that?"
"I know," Lucas said cheerfully. "But I need to be to get you to do anything."
To say that they were friends would not be exactly true. More like Lucas was one of the only people in the school that could deal with Michael. Despite his very best attempts to alienate his roommate, Lucas remained, for the most part, stubbornly cheerful and friendly. Michael had long since given up trying. (And, if he were being honest with himself, he had also conceded that sometimes Lucas wasn't terrible to have around.)
"Anyway, we've got to get going, no matter how tired you are," Lucas added. "It's not my fault that you got in at four last night."
Michael, who'd been stooping to pick up one of his personal belonging up off the floor, froze.
"You're very noisy," Lucas mildly, correctly reading Michael's panicked expression. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone, as long as you get going so that I'm not late because you were slow."
"R-Right." Michael moved more quickly that morning than he had any other day at the Kadic.
Michael and Lucas came into the cafeteria together. Michael had already grabbed a tray and was about to get in line when he realized that Ivy was the last one to join the queue and froze. Michael was not sure that he was ready to deal with her yet. He almost considered not eating altogether, but he'd skipped dinner last night to bribe Rupert for Belpois' address. His hunger gnawed at his insides. Instead, Michael turned to his roommate. "Hey, Lucas. D'you want to go in front of me?" Michael gave him a winning smile.
Lucas saw through this in an instant. "No. Just get in line." He gave Michael a slight push.
Michael scowled and got in line, deliberately not making eye contact with Ivy and hoping that she would not talk to him. Fortunately, Ivy either did not notice him or was equally inclined to ignore him. For this, Michael was thankful.
His luck did not last. As they seated themselves at their usual table, Michael started eating. Lucas did not. He was looking at Michael oddly. "What?" Michael demanded after a few minutes of this. Being stared at made him uncomfortable.
"Nothing," Lucas said quickly. "It's just... it's strange."
"What's strange?" asked Michael impatiently. He hated when Lucas started talking like this.
"Well, I know you always ignore Ivy, but usually, she at least tries to be nice to you. Today, she was ignoring you as well. Why is that, I wonder?" Lucas raised an eyebrow. "Did something happen?"
Michael's face colored. Another thing that bothered him about Lucas – too perceptive for his own good. "Nothing happened," Michael snapped. "Stop reading too much into things. Shut up and eat so we can go to class."
Lucas smirked. "You want to go to class? Are you sure you're not running a fever there?" Michael gave a little annoyed grunt that became a noise of surprise and dismay as Lucas waved Ivy over to them.
She wore a perplexed and slightly suspicious expression as she made her way over to them, carrying her tray. "What?"
Lucas tilted his white-blond head a little to the side. "Nothing," he said. "I just thought you might like to sit with us. You look awful lonely way over there." He gestured to the table she'd been sitting at alone.
"Oh. Thank you." Any hope that Michael had carried that Ivy would decline was dashed. Still looking quite surprised, she settled herself next to Lucas and caught Michael's eye briefly. He looked away to glare at Lucas instead. Ivy did not understand, he knew, how nosy and interfering Lucas could be. She was about to find out.
"So," Lucas said cheerfully, taking a bite of his parfait. "What's new with you, Ivy? Done anything new and exciting recently?"
Her green eyes flicked to Michael. That was all it took for Michael to understand that she thought that he had told Lucas everything. Michael was already frustrated with Lucas' prying, but now his temper was starting to bubble again. How could she think that, when she was the one who had told everything last night? Unlike her, Michael was quite capable of keeping a secret. "Nothing new," Ivy answered Lucas, putting on a sweet smile for him.
"Aw. Well, that's no fun." Lucas' thin lips pulled into a frown. "Forgive me for saying so, but you're looking a little worn out," he noted. "Were you-"
Michael kicked him hard under the table. "-up late last night studying?" Lucas finished anyway, grimacing in pain.
"Yes, I was," Ivy agreed, nodding.
"What subject?" Lucas asked innocently.
Michael gripped his fork so tightly that it hurt his hand. He desperately wanted to tell Lucas directly to stop this questioning, but he could not think how to do so without arousing further suspicion. 'I'm going to kill him,' he thought, placing the emphasis on different words in an effort to distract himself. 'I'M going to kill him, I'm going to KILL him, I'm GOING to kill him, I'm…'
"What are you trying to get at Lucas?" asked Ivy now.
Lucas' eyebrows furrowed. "Nothing," he said smoothly. "I just wanted to make sure we didn't have a test today. We don't, do we?"
"We might," Ivy said with a hint of a smile, then turned her head to check the time on the clock on the wall.
Lucas seemed displeased. His prying was not yielding the results he had hoped for, obviously. It was all that Michael could do not to smirk. Abruptly, Lucas stood. "I'll be right back," he said.
"Where're you going?" Michael demanded. While he wanted Lucas to stop, he also had no desire to be left alone with Ivy right now.
"Bathroom," Lucas replied with a shrug. "Back in a few." He was gone before Michael could say anything more.
As soon as Lucas was safely away, Ivy rounded on him. "What's with him? Does he know?" she asked him, not quite concealing a note of accusation in her voice.
Michael bristled. "No, I didn't tell him anything. He saw me coming in last night and guessed bits and pieces from there. Thanks for assuming that I'd sell you and Belpois out, though," he sniped.
"I wasn't accusing you," Ivy snapped back, glaring at him.
"Oh yeah? Sure sounded like it." Already, they were fighting again. Why did they have to keep fighting? Michael wondered this, but could not seem to change it. Every word out of her mouth just seemed to make his blood boil.
"Well I didn't mean for it to sound like that!" Ivy said her voice rising slightly.
"Oh yeah? Well then, maybe you should be a little more careful with what you say." Michael's tone made it clear that he was still blaming Ivy for talking the night before. "Maybe if you just stopped talking altogether. Do everyone a favor." Why do I keep saying stuff like this? Michael wondered. I've already reduced her to tears once... Why am I trying to do it again? Already, he regretted saying this, but the words were out and there was no taking them back. Ivy's face was reddening. Michael was just starting to wonder if there was a way that he could backtrack when she stood up, took her tray, and slammed the food in Michael's face before storming from the cafeteria.
A great hush fell over the cafeteria as everyone turned to look at Michael. Slowly, calmly, Michael got to his feet. The parts of his face that were visible were burning a bright scarlet.
He nearly collided with Lucas as he walked out, evidently back from his trip to the "bathroom". "What... Whoa. What happened?"
The concern in Lucas' voice was genuine, but Michael was in no mood to hear it. "Shut up," he growled.
"Michael, what did you say? Are you alright?" Lucas grabbed his roommate's arm.
Michael ripped his arm out of Lucas' grasp. "None of your business. This whole thing is your goddamn fault, anyway." He stalked off to the bathroom to wash the food off his face and hair.