"Code: Insomnia"
By cdc100
Summary: Jeremie is having fits in his sleep. Aelita wants to know what's wrong with him and he insists that nothing is wrong. Find out what happens.
Disclaimer: This is a work of pure non-profit fan fiction. I do not own any of the characters, their weapons, their abilities, or any of their universes, nor do I own any of the lyrics that will appear in later chapters, or any of the products mentioned in the story such as Coca-Cola, or Playstation.
Note: I don't know if I'm spelling Jeremie's name right. I've seen it spelled, "Jeremie," and "Jeremy," so just bear with me. If anyone thinks I should change the spelling, send me a review.
Chapter Two
"Stealing the Camera"
The next morning, Aelita woke up, still in the infirmary. As her eyes slowly opened, she could see Jeremie sitting up in his bed, his arms crossed, his eyes looking an interesting cross between irritated, anxious, and tired.
"Good morning, Jeremie," said Aelita.
Aelita smiled. It was nice having Jeremie be the first thing she saw when she woke up for once.
"Hello, Aelita," Jeremie said with a frown.
At this, Aelita frowned as well.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I'm waiting for Yolande to wake up," said Jeremie. "I need to get back to my room ASAP."
Aelita sat up in her bed.
"What's the big emergency, Jeremie?" she asked.
Jeremie shook his head.
"I've got a bunch of work to do, and I can't do it from here," he said. "Every minute I wait is another minute that could be spent working on…"
Jeremie trailed off.
"Jeremie," said Aelita, "I realize that you're trying to find a way to finish XANA for good, but…you have a life too, you know?"
Jeremie took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.
"No I don't," said Jeremie. "I never have. And now, thanks to me, none of you do either."
Aelita quirked an eyebrow.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
Before Jeremie could answer, the two teens heard the sound of a door opening. Looking in the direction of the noise, they saw Yolande enter the room, dressed and ready for business.
"Good morning, Jeremie," said Yolande. "Aelita."
"Good morning, Yolande," said Aelita.
Jeremie didn't answer, instead looking expectantly at the nurse.
"Alright, Jeremie," said Yolande. "Let's do a double check of everything, okay?"
Jeremie heaved a sigh and got out of his bed. He sat in the stool before Yolande so that she could examine him.
Yolande checked everything that she had the night before, and after a few minutes and a few notes taken down on a clipboard, she addressed Jeremie.
"Well, it seems your blood pressure has gone down a little and you look like you've pulled yourself together a little," said Yolande. "How do you feel?"
"Well enough, I guess," said Jeremie. "Just anxious to get out of here. No offense, Yolande."
"None taken, Jeremie," said Yolande. "It's normal. The good news is, you can go back to your room. In addition, I have spoken to Mr. Delmas, and he has agreed to dismiss you from class for this coming week, provided you keep up on your schoolwork."
Jeremie quirked his eyebrow.
"You're serious?" he asked.
"Absolutely," said Yolande. "However, Jim will be making periodic checks on you to make sure you are getting the rest you clearly need."
Jeremie groaned under his breath.
"I figured there'd be a catch," said Jeremie. "Fine. I'll go and rest."
"Good," said Yolande. "Both of you are free to go. Now, I suggest that you both go get dressed and get some breakfast."
Jeremie got up and morosely walked out of the room, but not before looking over his shoulder at Aelita. As Aelita followed him out, he made a bee-line for his room.
"Jeremie, wait up!" said Aelita.
She came up beside Jeremie and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Jeremie, you started to say something earlier," said Aelita. "That…you don't have a life? That we don't have lives because of you?"
"Look, Aelita," said Jeremie. "Don't worry about me. I'm going to grab breakfast and take it back to my room to eat and rest. You go and have fun with the others. If something bad happens, I'll text you."
Before Aelita could say anything, Jeremie quickened his pace and rounded a corner which would inevitably lead to the cafeteria.
Once in the cafeteria, Jeremie lined up and got his food as fast as he could. Rosa, the lunch lady, was kind enough to give him a go box for his food, which Jeremie gratefully took.
(A/N: Rosa Petitjean – Jodi Forrest)
"Be careful, Jeremie," said Rosa. "We'd all hate for anything to happen to you."
"I'll be fine, Rosa," said Jeremie. "Thanks."
With that, Jeremie took his food and took the most direct route from the cafeteria to the dorm.
Unfortunately, that route was via a door that the school "diva" Elisabeth Delmas, A.K.A. Sissi, daughter of the principle, and her goons Nicholas Poliakoff and Herb Pichon, chose that precise moment to enter.
"Well, if it isn't Stephen Sleepwalking," said Sissi. "What was with you last night?"
(A/N: Elisabeth "Sissi" Delmas – Jodi Forrest)
"None of your business, Delmas," said Jeremie.
"My school, my business," said Sissi. "And it's especially my business when a student acts like a total hooligan, even in his sleep."
Jeremie sighed and held her hand up inches from Sissi's face, in the shape of an O.
"You know what this is?" he asked.
"My IQ, right?" asked Sissi.
"That, and the amount of your bullshit I'm in the mood for today," said Jeremie, pushing past the trio. "Now get out of my way. I've got better things to do than deal with stupid for one more minute of this day."
As Jeremie trudged off, Sissi yelled after him.
"Hey!" she yelled. "Don't you walk away from me!"
"Oh," Jeremie called back without so much as looking, "by the way, 'Stephen Sleepwalking?' Real original. What you should have gone for was Sigmund Freak."
At that last comment, Jeremie could hear Sissi let out a raging curse.
Eventually, Jeremie got back to his room, but when he did, he braced a piece of furniture against the door, and set the food he had retrieved on his bed before he went over to his computer, and re-opened the window labelled "Princess."
He re-examined the lines of code within the window and checked to make sure he didn't need to make any corrections. When he was sure everything was alright, he started up his typing again.
After a half hour, his wrist started to hurt, but he paid it no mind. After what happened the night before, he felt a burning urgency to finish with the program he was working on.
As he continued writing on his program, Aelita was cooped up in her room as well. However, unlike Jeremie, Aelita was not the only occupant.
Aelita had invited Odd, Ulrich and Yumi to her room, and had just finished explaining the event from the previous night.
"He just started pulling on the window?" asked Odd. "What, did he just need some fresh air?"
"It's not funny, Odd," said Aelita, scowling at her friend. "You didn't see the look on his face. He looked like his life was at stake. Like he was trying to get away from something. Something terrifying."
"Like what?" asked Ulrich.
"I don't know," said Aelita. "When he snapped out of it, he claimed to have no memory of what happened. None at all."
"Really?" asked Yumi.
Odd scratched his head.
"This sounds like some serious XANA-type stuff," he said. "I mean, think about it. He's pretty desperate to get rid of us, so who's to say that he hasn't come up with some kind of weird plan to make us all commit suicide without realizing it?"
"No offense to you, Odd," said Ulrich. "That is a pretty interesting and plausible theory…"
"Yeah," said Yumi. "That does sound like something XANA would do."
"But I'm having serious doubts that XANA was involved with what happened to Jeremie," said Ulrich. "I mean, if he was, we would also have to assume that he was responsible for the way that he's been acting lately. Of course, if he was, then we would have to ask ourselves why would XANA try to do Jeremie in, only after making Jeremie isolate himself from the rest of us first. It would only be slightly less suspicious than XANA just dealing with him right away, which is more XANA's style."
"He's got a point," said Yumi. "It's more likely that Jeremie's got some deep-seated issues that he's having trouble dealing with and doesn't want us involved with."
"What could be more troubling to him than XANA?" asked Odd. "We've been trying to get rid of him for over a year. The son of a glitch has pulled all kinds of lethal stuff since we first stepped into the scanners."
"I think you're all right," said Aelita.
The group turned to look at her.
"What do you mean, Princess?" asked Odd.
"You're all right," said Aelita.
"How?" asked Odd.
"Well, I don't think XANA was involved either," said Aelita, playing with Mr. Puck's arms. "At least not directly. But I do think you're on to something, Odd. Before we left the infirmary, Jeremie said something that kind of worried me."
"What did he say?" asked Yumi.
"I told him that I realize it's important that we stop XANA, but that he has a life, too," said Aelita. "But then he said he didn't have a life, and that thanks to him, none of us do either."
"That's it?" asked Ulrich. "Nothing else?"
Aelita shook her head.
"That was all I managed to get out of him before Yolande came in," she said. "He seemed desperate to get away. He seemed to want to be alone."
Ulrich nodded his head.
"Well, I don't think we're going to be able to help Jeremie with all that we've got," he said. "We should gather more information somehow."
"How do we do that?" asked Yumi.
"Well, we need to think of some way to find out what he's up to," said Ulrich.
After a moment, Ulrich snapped his fingers.
"I've got it," said Ulrich. "There was something in his room that he wouldn't let me touch when I stayed in his room the night before the whole 'Glad When You're Bad' incident. It was some type of camera thing. It was strapped to the back of some kind of remote controlled vehicle."
Ulrich looked toward Aelita.
"Aelita, if we could get ahold of that camera, is there a way that you'd be able to get a remote feed from it?" he asked.
"I might be able to," said Aelita. "I would need to have the camera here, though. Unless, by some crazy luck you have the serial number for the camera off the top of your head."
Ulrich shook his head.
"No," he said. "I don't."
"Which means we would have to grab the camera," said Yumi. "Which also means we would have to wait until he comes out of his room."
Odd scoffed.
"When?" he asked. "When I'm forty?"
"It's true he won't leave his room willingly," said Ulrich. "But there's one thing that even Jeremie won't stay in his room for."
"What's that?" asked Odd.
Suddenly, Odd widened his eyes.
"Oh," he said. "Never mind. I understand. Okay, yeah, that could work. The problem is, he doesn't take that long in the bathroom. How long would it take for Aelita to set up the link?"
"About two minutes," said Aelita. "When we go in, I'll bring my laptop with me and we can turn it on and get it synchronized with my computer."
"Good," said Ulrich. "And while you're handling that, we can search his room for any clues he might have left. Anything that might give us a hint to what's going on."
The others nodded their heads.
"Tell you what," said Odd. "I'll go and hide around the corner and signal you when he comes out."
"What's the signal?" asked Ulrich.
He knocked on the door five times.
"Shave and a haircut," said Odd. "That work?"
"Yeah, that'll be fine," said Ulrich. "Just make sure it's loud, alright?"
"Yep," said Odd, running out the door.
As the three waited, Aelita took out her laptop and got it ready. As she did so, she wore a frown that seemed as though it was glued to her face.
"Aelita," said Yumi. "You okay?"
"I'm worried, Yumi," said Aelita. "Jeremie's hurting himself somehow. I don't know how just yet, but…I can't help but feel like it's somehow our fault. Or at least mine."
"Hey," said Yumi, putting a hand on Aelita's shoulder. "It's nobody's fault, Aelita. Not yours, not ours, not even Jeremie's. We may not know what Jeremie's going through, but whatever it is, he's not going through it because of us, and I sincerely doubt that he's doing it to himself. At least not on purpose. And whatever it is, we'll all face it together. Got it?"
Aelita looked up at Yumi and smiled as she offered the older girl a nod.
Not long after, the trio heard Odd's knock and quickly bolted down to Jeremie's room. The three quickly found Jeremie's camera, which Aelita immediately started to synchronize to her computer. As she worked, Ulrich, Odd and Yumi searched the room.
"Look," said Odd, indicating the go box on Jeremie's bed. "It's this morning's breakfast. It's gone cold and hasn't even been touched."
Yumi went over to Jeremie's computer for examination, but then stepped away.
"Better not touch his computer," she said. "He might notice."
"Don't worry," said Ulrich, as he looked through Jeremie's closet. "Just put everything back the way you found it."
"Alright," said Yumi, taking hold of Jeremie's mouse. "He's got three windows open. They're all labeled… 'Princess.'"
"Can you tell what they are?" asked Ulrich.
"Looks like it's mostly codes," said Yumi.
"Nothing in his closet," said Ulrich. "Oh. Wait."
Ulrich reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a large container. He opened it to discover that it was filled with packets of food. The food included chips, beef jerky, crackers, and other kinds of morsels.
"He's got a stockpile of food here," said Ulrich. "It doesn't look like he's used very much of it."
"I'll say," said Odd. "Have you seen how thin he looks lately?"
"You're one to talk, Odd," said Yumi. "I swear you've got a black hole for a stomach, because I know you're not retaining anything you eat."
"Okay, I'm done," said Aelita, setting the camera in its original position. "Let's go."
The quartet ran from the room and back into Aelita's.
Once inside, Aelita opened her laptop, and she could see that the camera was indeed sending a feed. She and her friends began to watch the feed closely and intently.
To Be Continued…
