A/N:
***Tell Me by RL Grime
Yumi pulls up the zipper of her leather jacket in anticipation of a windy ride. She loves driving with all the windows down, music blasting like she doesn't care, because she doesn't.
She puts the key in the ignition and starts the car. Just as she's about to back out of the driveway, her phone vibrates in her butt pocket. She debates just continuing to drive and ignoring the text message for thirty minutes, which would be a bad idea if the message were from her parents. Pulling out her phone, she sees that the message is from Jeremie. It reads: Hey, urgent meeting. 20:00, my room.
Oh, this can't be good, she thinks. The last times we had urgent meetings were for the Marabounta and the Kolossus.
She shakes that thought out of her head. There's no way that this meeting could have anything to do with Lyoko. XANA is dead, and the Supercomputer has been off for five whole years. It would be dumb to think such a thing.
***Tossing her cell phone onto the passenger seat, she resumes backing out of the driveway, and puts on some uptempo beats that Aelita introduced her to the other day. Before Aelita became a DJ—thanks to the Subdigitals—Yumi used to listen only to metal. Now she regularly gets music recommendations in the electronic genre, and they actually aren't half bad. Of course, it certainly takes some getting used to, even if the song is "bangin'," as Odd so eloquently puts it. In the words of Aelita: "There is more to life than just Rise Against!"
Technically speaking, Yumi shouldn't be one to blast music while driving. As a cadet in the police academy, it is in her contract that she "shall exhibit the highest standard of civil obedience to lead as an example to the general public." But she does not care, and that is that. Her car is unmarked, and she isn't wearing her uniform or anything with the logo on it, so she figures she can get away with it.
Orly International Airport is in Paris, so it is just under a half hour from Kadic Academy, which is in Boulogne-Billancourt. Normally, Yumi wouldn't need to pick her parents up from the airport in the middle of an evening class, but since her parents' car is currently out of commission, she is temporarily their chauffeur.
About two weeks ago, her parents were hit from the side by a distracted driver, and their car overturned. Luckily, the only serious injury was a broken arm incurred by her mother—the other car had hit on her side. Her father was even more lucky than his wife, for he only got superficial cuts and minor abrasions from the accident. It is unfortunate that the couple had to travel to Japan in such a condition, but Mrs. Ishiyama's cousin was in hospice due to pass away very soon, and she wanted to see her cousin one last time. The funeral service took place yesterday.
Yumi frowns. I wonder what exactly happened to her. Maybe mom will give me more details now that she's seen for herself? She glances down at the time, illuminated by a soft orange glow. It reads 18:55. She hears her phone vibrate on the seat.
"I guess I'm gonna have to be late to this meeting of his."
It's 19:52 and Jeremie is still alone in his dorm. He paces around the room, a red pen in his mouth, and all of the notes that he has ever taken are strewn across his desk.
"Einstein! There better be a damn good reason for this. Sissi and I were supposed to go out tonight."
"My apologies. You can do a rain check for some other time." Jeremie's voice is monotonal.
Odd is taken aback. "Geez…what's your problem?"
"You'll find out soon enough."
"Yeah, I hope so," Ulrich adds to the conversation as he walks in, putting on a jacket over his shirt. "I left Pencak Silat practice early for this."
It is silent in the room when Aelita walks in, textbook in hand. "Sorry. I got too into my homework." She makes it a point to sit on the floor as opposed to sitting on Jeremie's bed.
"You okay?" Ulrich asks, an eyebrow raised.
"Yeah… yeah, I'm fine."
At that moment, Yumi runs into the room, panting like she just ran a marathon. "Sorry I'm late. Had to pick my parents up from the airport, then I ran here from home since it's faster than using the car."
Jeremie doesn't respond. He closes the door behind Yumi then, without turning around to face his friends, begins to speak. "Do you want the short or long version?"
"Just spit it out, Einstein," Odd says as he pops a stick of gum into his mouth.
Jeremie takes a beat to breathe deeply before turning around, leaning on the door, and saying the three words he never ever imagined would leave his lips. "XANA is back."
If someone were to drop a pin right at that very moment, they would have heard a clink against the carpet loud and clear. Silence does not even begin to describe the hush that falls over the group of young adults in that stuffy room.
Jeremie walks over to his desk and picks up the black leather-bound notebook Aelita gave to him earlier in the day. "This book has in it writings that are coded in many different ways via manual encryption. Some of the encryptions are easier to crack than others—there's a whole section in here written in binary code, thank goodness.
"According to Franz Hopper, there are two things we did wrong. The first thing we did was underestimating the sheer number of Replikas. There were 505 terabytes of free space in the Supercomputer before XANA started spawning Replikas. Assuming that each Replika takes up approximately 5 terabytes—that's 5000 gigabytes—of space, it is safe to assume that there were 101 Replikas created by XANA; each one is somewhere on the network, being powered by abandoned supercomputers worldwide. When I ran the multi-agent program to destroy all the Replikas, it understandably bugged up and only destroyed 50 of them. I know now that it wasn't nearly enough, at all.
"The second thing we did wrong was to attempt to use the multi-agent program as a super-antivirus, when its purpose was to destroy all of the Replikas. When the multi-agent program bugged up, it did not destroy XANA, it merely sent him running for the hills. Of course, he was weakened by the program, but not too significantly.
"In Hopper's notebook is a clear warning that the only way to rid this world of XANA is to destroy all of the Replikas so that he has no place to run, then use a specific code called the Recalcitrance Code. But there is no indication of what this code is comprised of. For now, anyway. I'm working on decrypting the cypher in the notebook."
"So," Ulrich interrupts, "basically, XANA has been alive this entire fucking time?"
"Ulrich…" Yumi warns him to tone it down.
"No. Do not tell me to calm down, Yumi. This is a life-threatening situation and we've been doing nothing but sitting on our asses for five fucking years!"
"Look, man, it isn't anyone's fault. We did the best we could back then, and we can do it again now." Odd clenches his fists as the words leave his mouth.
Once again, silence blankets the room. Everyone is in shock. Nobody knows what to do or what to say next.
Finally, Aelita speaks up. "How do you think I feel, Ulrich? I totally understand your pain. To think that…" she struggles to hold back an audible sob, refusing to sound pathetic, but the tears are already falling. "…That my father's sacrifice was completely in vain… it breaks my heart. But it also makes me want to truly end this once and for all, for humanity and for him."
The others nod solemnly, unable to properly vocalize their feelings as eloquently as Aelita.
"So what's the next step?" Yumi asks of Jeremie.
"Tomorrow I'm going to start a Superscan and see what happens. We can go from there." He turns his back to everyone in a nonverbal dismissal. He pulls his chair out, pushes his glasses up his nose, and continues re-reading through at least four years of notes.
One by one, the Warriors sullenly leave the room, the weight of dejection heavy on each of their shoulders. Just as Aelita is about to get up from the floor to follow everyone else out, Jeremie calls out to her.
"Aelita! Wait—"
"Don't. Not now."
"If we're going to be a team again, then we need to talk about this and get it sorted out."
Aelita turns to face him. "There is nothing to 'sort out' here, Jeremie. You've already proven to me that I cannot trust you."
Hurt, Jeremie falters before saying his next words. "Look, I know that I should have been honest with you about what I wanted out of our relationship—"
"You led me on, Jeremie!" She takes a small step toward him. "You waited for me to truly want to give myself to you, and then you tossed me aside like some old electronic." A sob breaks through her voice before she can stop it. "That's not the way love works."
"I... I was ashamed… I knew you'd react adversely if I told you."
"So you waited for me to hear it practically behind my own back?"
Jeremie gets up from his seat and walks over to her. He takes both of her hands in both of his, and looks her right in the eyes. "I'm sorry you had to find out the way you did. I never intended for you to hear my conversation with Ulr—"
"Save it, Jeremie." She yanks her hands away from his like he is a hot stovetop. "I'm not mad because of your sexuality. I'm mad because you couldn't trust me enough to tell me. Did you think I was going to hate you because you're asexual? Did you think I suddenly wouldn't want a future with you anymore just because you are less interested in sexual intimacy than I am?"
Jeremie cannot find it in himself to answer her in the affirmative.
But she understands what he means with his silence. "Oh my God. I can't believe you. If that's the kind of person you think I am, then you never really knew me. We are over, Jeremie." She turns and walks out the door before he can even process what she's said.