It took quite a bit of time to explain everything, especially Deryn and Alek's story. The blond boy—whose name, Deryn had learned, was Jeremy—and his friends refused to believe in time travel, despite the evidence before their eyes. Their dress, their mannerisms, everything about Deryn and Alek was vastly different from them, yet it took easily fifteen minutes to convince these people that she was telling the truth.

Their story, though—"pear-shaped" didn't do it justice. A supercomputer that contained a virtual world, an artificial intelligence that wanted to take over the real world, and they supposedly fought attacks from the AI every day. Or most days, anyway.

Oh, and she believed someone had said something about monsters. What kind of a barking mad future was this?

"Wait. How do you stop this thing again?" Deryn asked, utterly confused. "You go to Lyoko and..."

"And I deactivate the tower," a short, pink-haired girl finished. She appeared somewhat annoyed.

Deryn ran a hand through her hair. "What do towers have to do with this?"

"Because in order to gain access to our world, XANA has to activate a tower on Lyoko," Jeremy said, appearing—and sounding—extremely annoyed. "And so we go there, fight his monsters, and Aelita deactivates the tower."

"And the super-scan tells you which tower was activated?" Alek said. He didn't sound nearly as confused as she, which made her feel a squick jealous.

Jeremy nodded. "You've got it."

Deryn scanned the group. There were five total, two girls and three boys. The Asian girl's name was Yumi, so apparently the pink-haired girl was Aelita. One of the boys had dark hair that was longer than she'd seen on any boy—his name was Ulrich—and the other was just a squick shorter than Aelita. His tall hairstyle made up for it, though. He was introduced to her as Odd, and Deryn though it a name well-suited to his appearance. She reckoned she'd never before seen a boy her age dressed in head-to-toe purple, after all.

The one thing meeting these strange people taught her, though, is that Dr. Barlow had been very wrong. Not only were they not at Kadic, they had also not been expected. Deryn wondered if the lady boffin knew about the virtual world, but if she did, then that meant that she had also known about XANA, and had intentionally made them immune to the Returns to the Past.

But if it were true, then how did she know?

"None of this yackum explains what happened to Volger," Deryn said, crossing her arms.

"Who is Volger, exactly?" Jeremy asked.

"We already told you," Alek said, stressed, "he's our guardian. You said he was in virtual limbo."

Jeremy nodded. "Yes. Everything was fine when you two were scanned, but the supercomputer rerouted Volger." He pressed some keys of the keyboard in front of him—all this new technology was making Deryn's head spin—and beckoned everyone to come closer. "He's either in virtual limbo, like I said earlier, or he's somewhere in Sector Five."

Alek furrowed his eyebrows. "If there's a fifth sector, shouldn't there be four others he could be in?"

"Yes, there should, but Sector Five is all we've recreated of Lyoko so far," Aelita explained.

"Recreated?" Deryn repeated.

Aelita nodded. "It's a long story."

"Anyway," Jeremy cut in, the only way to be sure where he is is if we go to Sector Five. If he's on Lyoko, we'll find him."

Deryn frowned and crossed her arms. "Aye, that's all well and good, but how do we get him back once we find him?"

"That depends on the situation," Jeremy said.

"So, we're going to Lyoko?" Ulrich asked, and Deryn realized that it was the first time she'd heard him speak so far.

Jeremy nodded. "Head for the scanners."

Alek sighed, and Deryn knew that it meant he was relieved. Even though Volger was barking annoying, he was important to Alek.

"Finally, we're getting something done," he muttered, and they followed the Lyoko Warriors to the elevator.

"Hold up," Yumi snapped, crossing her arms. She narrowed her eyes at Deryn and Alek. "Where do you two think you're going?"

"To Lyoko," Deryn answered simply.

It was true that she and Alek hadn't exactly been invited, but if they found Volger in Sector Five, she reckoned things would go better if there were familiar faces to greet him.

Yumi shook her head. "No way! It's too dangerous."

Too dangerous?

Yumi had never attempted a sliding escape from a Huxley two thousand feet in the air, had never been up close and personal with a behemoth, never ridden or piloted a walker, and had certainly never thrown herself off a massive airbeast with only gliding wings to break her fall.

"Too dangerous, my eye," Deryn snapped back. "We're coming with you!"

Alek took her hand and squeezed it once. "We can handle ourselves," he said, much more calmly than she had been. "Besides, we know Volger and you don't. It would be better if we went with you."

The five of them deliberated—that is, if nodding, head shaking, and eyebrow raising counted as deliberation. After a few moments, though, Jeremy shook his head.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said.

"What?!" Deryn cried, incredulous.

"Listen, the last time we took someone else to Lyoko, he ended up as XANA's pawn," Jeremy explained. "We can't take that chance again."

Deryn huffed. This was beyond ridiculous, but Alek cut her off before she could say anything.

"Understandable. We'll wait here," he said.

She turned to him. "You can't be serious!"

"Arguing with them will get us nowhere," Alek explained quietly. "Besides, they know what they're doing, and we don't. If we're going to get Volger back, we need to cooperate with them."

She sighed. He was right, of course, but that didn't make the situation any less barking annoying. She nodded, took a deep breath, and squeezed his hand back. After hiding for so long, it was strangely exciting to hold hands with other people around. Deryn imagined then how exciting it would be to kiss him, in public, without fear of being fired from her job, and butterflies filled her stomach.

"What are you grinning for?" Alek whispered, and Deryn realized that her smile had turned into a daft, mooning grin.

"No reason," she whispered back, pressing closer to him.

Jeremy glanced over at them with an apprehensive gaze, then shook his head. "Get in the scanners; I'm starting the virtualization process."

Watching Jeremy work the supercomputer for an hour was the most barking boring thing Deryn had ever done. The boy just sat there, typing never-ending strings of nonsense into the machine, and watched the grid of Lyoko on the monitor. Occasionally, he would alert his friends of approaching monsters, and had to warn them when their life points dropped too low.

Deryn was itching to be fighting digital monsters, despite the fact that her understanding of digital things was sub-par at best, but Alek was enraptured by the supercomputer. He watched the monitors and screens almost as closely as Jeremy, and asked about a hundred questions.

Sodding Clanker.

"Barking spiders, it's not that interesting," she muttered under her breath.

"On the contrary," Alek said. "It's actually very interesting." And with that, he launched into a mini-lecture of all Jeremy had told him, beginning with what every blip on the screen was.

"Alek," she interrupted halfway through, "it was yackum when Jeremy said it, and it's yackum now."

"Tell me about it. Einstein confuses everyone with that stuff," came Odd's voice from behind them. He'd been devirtualized by a creeper a minute or so ago, Deryn remembered.

Jeremy shushed them and pressed the microphone closer to his ear. "Great job! Transfer the memory to me now." He then turned to Alek and said, "Aelita found your friend."

Deryn snorted. The wildcount was hardly her friend. Calling him that was even a stretch for Alek.

"Where is he?" Alek leaned closer to the monitor, as if by doing that he'd see the answer.

"In Lyoko, soon," Jeremy answered. "After we transfer the memory to the supercomputer, it's just a matter of rematerializing him."

She took a deep breath. It was a miracle that Volger could be found so quickly, and certainly made their lives easier. Except, of course, they'd have to explain things to him, have to answer questions they didn't have the answers to themselves.

"Materialization," Jeremy murmured, and typed some more.

Deryn looked at the monitor. In the center of the screen, a card-like pop up had appeared. A blank orange form was printed on it, and a bar of light traveled slowly upwards; Deryn guessed that that meant the program was loading. But after a few seconds, everything stopped and a giant red exclamation point appeared over the card.

"What's wrong?" Alek asked quickly. He gripped her fingers tighter.

"It looks like he's going to be here for a while," Jeremy answered, narrowing his eyes.

Deryn took a deep breath to steady herself and squeezed Alek's fingers reassuringly. Nothing about this day had gone according to plan, and this was the last thing they needed. But one thing she'd learned today was that if anyone could get Volger back, it would be these strange Lyoko Warriors.