AN: Thank you all for your patience. After this chapter, I will look towards incorporating more viewpoints from other characters when possible. Chapters 3 and 4 will most likely be uploaded at the same time.
I do not write chapters in order. I have laid out chapter divisions and write/rearrange different chapters during revision.
For the guest who reviewed, I apologize for not being more thorough. I meant Aelita's vision (eg: the park scene) to be similar to how she sees glimpses of her past in that they meld with the present sometimes.
Chapter II: Electric Dreams
Aelita jolts upward in a flurry of sheets, her entire body burning like coals and covered in a slick layer of sweat. Sunlight streams through the massive windows in her dorm room, landing squarely in her eyes. She squints, trying to focus as the bright light leaves spots in her vision. The dull headache from yesterday pounds away. The clock beside her helpfully reads 07:12, its blocky red digits blinking in steady, reassuring pulses.
Her entire face feels hot, and her body trembles violently when she tries to rise. The sensations of everything are almost overwhelming, screaming information at her from a thousand different directions.
It's Saturday, February 7.
She swallows nervously, and is suddenly acutely aware of how dry her mouth is. Her tongue feels like sandpaper, incessantly rapsing against the roof of her mouth. Aelita coughs, and her itching throat and painfully constricting chest protest the movement.
Saturday classes were starting in—
Her room abruptly spins, and it's only the reflexes borne from years of fighting on Lyoko that allow her to tightly grasp the bed frame as her body gives out under her. The pressure in her head mounts and presses up against the side of her skull, like a balloon about to burst. Fighting back tears at the sudden increase in pain, she decides to visit the school nurse instead.
"38.4 degrees," Yolanda hums thoughtfully as she eyes the thermometer. "It's a fever, alright. Best treatment is lots of rest and plenty of fluids. If you'd like, I can give you some medicine for it to help keep the temperature down."
"Yes, please," Aelita responds weakly, grateful for any relief. She curls into herself, as if it would stop her body from the shivers that incessantly wrack her small frame.
"Cheer up, Princess," Odd grins reassuringly, holding her shoulder and giving it a comforting squeeze. "You'll be back in fighting shape in no time."
"I hope so," she quietly murmurs once the blonde woman walks out of earshot. "It's my first time getting sick after being materialized a year ago."
"You don't think living on Lyoko for so long has got anything to do with it, do you?" Yumi whispers to the resident genius. "A lot can change in ten years. Maybe her body's reacting to something that wasn't on Earth before."
"Not a chance," Jeremie declares confidently, adjusting his glasses. "Aelita would have definitely gotten sick soon after being materialized if that was the case."
"Yeah, and our daily adventures in the sewers thanks to our friend, XANA, certainly doesn't help things at all," Odd beams, casually jerking a thumb towards the window. Aelita can't help but crack a small smile.
Ulrich hisses and suddenly makes an urgent gesture with his hand, and the Lyoko warriors instantly stop talking just as footsteps herald the nurse's return.
"Here," Yolanda hands Aelita a paper cup of cold water and two small white pills. "Take these. I unfortunately can't give you medication that you can take with you after-hours because of school policy, but you may stay here if you'd like."
Aelita shakes her head but obediently swallows the pills, listening attentively as the blonde woman reminded her of the infirmary's hours and gave suggestions on how to manage the symptoms.
"I'll give your friends excuse notes to pass along to your teachers. In the meantime, I strongly suggest bed rest."
The Lyoko Warriors trudge back to the dormitory hall, footsteps heavy as if walking through a prison yard. They pass by Jim, whose stern countenance and lecture at how the group should all be in class falters upon sight of their miserable state.
Aelita stares wistfully at the group as they leave her at her dorm room with well-wishes and promises to take notes for her. A surge of emotion wells up from deep within. Her chest tightens in a strangely pleasant manner. Gratitude brings the prickle of fresh tears to her eyes, and the thought of her friends crowding around her with little thought to getting sick themselves makes a coveted warmth sweep from her head to her toes.
Her gaze lingers as they close the door behind them, feeling that she would much rather be subject to hours of classes and dry study rather than being confined all day. And in an instant, the warmth disappears, taking the last reserve of energy she had with it. Despondent, she pulls the itchy blanket over her in a makeshift cocoon and tries to sleep.
She dreams of snow.
She's at the mountain cabin again, half-buried beside the snowmen she worked hard to build. Two of them tower over her small body with wonky purple button eyes and uneven reassuring smiles made with pebbles. The last, unfinished one lies at her feet; piles of slush are pathetically slumped over themselves in a formless mass. Tall spruce and fir trees frame the edges of her vision and scrape the cloudless sky with thousands of fingers. Their snowy boughs are frozen-over and heavily laden with thin icicles that glimmer faintly in a menagerie of colors as the sunlight filters through. Beyond the reaches of the forest, the Swiss mountain range peeks over the treeline like a silent watchman, thickly wreathed in a layer of powdery white.
Aelita instinctively tries to move an arm and dig herself out, but finds her body stiff and reluctant to respond instead. The plum-colored scarf loosely wrapped around her face has long frozen to her coat, and the matching mittens are freshly torn at the fringes and muddied. Water seeps through the sodden cloth and coats her fingers. Snow lies packed around her bare knees and infiltrates flat plum shoes ill-suited for winter play. Aelita knows she should be shivering, but even though great billowing puffs of smoke appear with every breath she takes, the world feels unremarkable, comfortable even.
Aelita lifts her head and looks around, finding the clearing devoid of life. Deep tire tracks messily carved their way out of the chalet's open field, leaving behind a mass of tiny footprints that tore through the snow in a vain attempt to follow. Finally wrenching herself out of the frozen earth's hold, she stands, finding herself no taller than the lowest tree branches.
The realization of where she was and what just happened hits her, but the sensation is strangely muted, as if she were a passive viewer leisurely looking into another's life. An almost imperceptible wave of sadness washes over her for the briefest of moments, and the girl is thankful that her mother's kidnapping was spared reenactment. The thought of finding her father faintly registers in her mind, echoed by a growing sense of dread that started to worm its way into her heart. With one last wistful look, she turns away from the scene and slowly trudges home, walking opposite desperate footsteps.
The wind howls. Snow is easily shaken from tree boughs. Wood creaks and splinters, trees sway dangerously in the gusts. The sunlight intensifies to a near-blinding degree; rays of light bounce off of the snow and seem to burn into her eyes. A whirlwind of birds swiftly take flight, their distorted cries echoing and deafening in the field.
Startled, Aelita whips around, and a government official in a matching gray outfit stands before her. His shadow stretches across the vast distance between them, easily dwarfing her. The man's form appears as if someone tried to draw a person from memory—the limbs are long and skeletal, and his crooked body is oddly proportioned. Beside a pair of dark sunglasses and a rugged seam lining the area where lips should have been, there are no features on his face. The ruddy flesh has a sickly appearance to it, almost as if it were made of wax. The skin is stretched thinly over his skull, and the faintest traces of darkened veins could be seen pulsing underneath.
Aelita quickly backs away, but finds that the empty clearing no longer exists when her back presses up against something solid. In the field's place, she finds the chalet's interior, white furniture and all neatly placed between the two of them. The room warps, and the walls distort, stretching and curving higher than the eye could see. Light brighter than a thousand suns blazes into the room.
The faceless agent violently lunges toward her, crossing the space in the blink of an eye. A low, guttural noise burbles from his throat as he bashes the grand piano aside with a single swipe. The seam lining his face splits apart with a deafening screech, and the ruined halves flap limply. Where a mouth should have been is nothing but empty darkness lined with uncountable rows of teeth that seem to sink to impossible depths. His body seems to melt with a tortured whine as he mounts over the last of the furniture blocking his way, dissolving into a twisted mockery of the human form. Parts of its body seemed to slough off and hit the floor, where they writhe like earthworms. It reaches out to her and rests a melting paw on her shoulder, while the remainder of its hand clamps down and burrows into her flesh.
With a scream, Aelita rips off its hold and flees, half-stumbling as it takes a swipe at her. Its cries follow her as she darts down the hallways and through several rooms. Its heavy steps echo like gunshots as it homes in on her. Thunderous galloping shake floor boards and rattle faceless picture frames. Paint curls and peels from the walls, and an invisible rot tears at the wooden supports. The house trembles, and rooms disintegrate in a roaring whirlpool around her, herding her deeper and deeper into its belly. She dares to glance back as she ducks into the small alcove leading to the basement, legs shaking uncontrollably. The corridor she had just bolted through is swallowed by an inky darkness punctuated by countless gleaming white dots.
Thousands of creatures of every size and shape round the corner like a crashing wave. With a yelp, Aelita manages to shut the door in time. Their bodies continuously batter against the wooden frame, which shakes violently and causes motes of debris to skitter free and catch flickering light emanating from bare, cracked bulbs. The wall next to the frame cracks, and little Aelita swiftly takes off deeper into the darkness.
The chalet's basement transforms into a labyrinth of concrete corridors and massive steam pipes that run along the walls' lengths. Bright tube lighting gives way to flickering industrial bulbs that sporadically line the ceiling and drone in electric hums. The dim lighting is yellow and sickly, marred by the choking masses of dust and cobwebs lining the rusting metal grills surrounding aging bulbs. Instinctively, she knows that it's a bunker of some sort.
Her tiny feet hurriedly pad across filthy, unfinished flooring, methodical slaps that race in time with her heart. Straining metal creaks under pressure and the sound of burst piping distantly echoes behind her. Murky liquid instantly sloshes down the corridors with a torrential roar that drowns out the hissing steam.
Cold wetness seeps into her socks once more. The liquid seems to turn into molasses the instant it touches her. Every step is a struggle. Something akin to clawed fingers scrapes at her back and starts to tear into her coat. She wiggles loose, foregoing shoes and fleeing on bare feet.
"Hurry, Aelita!" Franz's voice rings out at the end of the hall.
"Daddy!" she cries out in desperation, pushing her body harder. "Daddy!"
A formless mass falls from the ceiling in front of her, and a wolf of monstrous size forms, its dark gray fur bristling in the dingy lighting. Aelita tries to skid to a stop, but it's too late. It rears up with a thunderous cry that shakes the building to its foundations and causes massive chunks of concrete to crash to the floor. Snarling, it dives down towards her with gaping maws and swallows her whole.
This dream is familiar, and yet different.
Aelita stares at the back of her hands as they clenched her knees with unparalleled ferocity. Pale scars marr roughened and chapped skin, their thin outlines tracing over each other in whispered stories of previous fights. The starched and ironed black pants creases in her nervous grip, and freshly-trimmed nails easily leave crescent-shaped indents behind. The suffocating layers of clothing adorning the rest of her body are of the same stiff quality, and she silently bristles at their restrictiveness. The crisp white dress shirt chafes her wrists, and the black suit jacket is almost unbearably hot.
Ripping her gaze from her lap, she dares to look around. The sedan ferrying her is unremarkable, with an interior decorated in a similarly uninteresting manner. The ride is silent, save for the low rumble of the engine. Aelita cranes her neck, trying to take in the sights. An unfamiliar part of the world speeds past her in colorless blurs. Two people dressed similarly to her flank her sides, faces hard and set in a permanent scowl. They stare straight ahead mechanically, unresponsive even as she curiously waves her hand in front of their faces.
"We're here."
Aelita instinctively throws out an arm to brace herself as the car suddenly lurches to a stop in front of a tall metal gate. Ivy curls around the gate's square posts and drapes down their lengths. Trees frame the edges like silent guardians, towering over visitors and inhabitants alike.
Silently, she files out of the car, finding herself in front of the other two as they push through the gate and advance towards a modest-looking house four stories tall. The garden in the front is lined with painstakingly manicured shrubs—some trimmed into a lanky conical shape, and others left to resemble miniature trees. Purple flowers peek from underneath their shadows, their delicate petals splaying wide and welcoming the sun. Just by the white-painted garage door and hiding in the shade, a bicycle lies discarded.
It was—
She's distracted by a sudden flash of movement. Her eyes catch a small glimpse of something ducking under a window above, and she snarls.
"Alright, come out of there!" she shouts, and is surprised at the sheer aggression in her voice.
The three burst through the open front door when their quarry doesn't respond, storming into the house. Through mirrored glasses, a bearded, gray-haired man glares at them at the foot of a stairwell. Their target. The scientist. He stands protectively in front of a young girl, splaying his arms as if to shield her from them.
"This way," he murmurs to the girl, insistently pulling her along.
"Stop!" Aelita shouts.
He scoffs. Before they can do so much as take a step, the scientist rounds the stairwell leading to the lower floor and disappears with the young girl. Aelita and her partners hurriedly chase the pair down the stairs, but he seems to always be faster. The dark red of the man's sweater seems to be swallowed within the basement's shadows, its owner getting closer to slipping through their fingers once again. Aelita's heart squeezes, and her jaw clenches painfully. Not again! Not when they were so close!
Her hand dives inside the suit jacket without her input. In the blink of an eye, it draws a black pistol from its depths and whips it in their direction. She aims for the man's lower body, and squeezes the trigger.
At the very last microsecond, the girl shifts in her position.
Aelita watches, terrified, as the bullet meant for getting the man to stop pierces through the young girl's skull instead.
The girl collapses wordlessly, dazed, and the man roars in horrified anguish as he turns and suddenly realizes what happened. Without breaking stride, he scoops the injured girl in his hands and flees down the hallway. Droplets of red trail behind him. The girl gawps, and breathes something to the scientist. Her arms twitch, fingers loosely clinging to his sweater.
A white rectangle appears at the far end of the hall as the man wrenches a door to the outside open, and flings it shut behind him.
Aelita's partners reach the door before she does, and slam their bodies against it when it refuses to open. Wood splinters and cracks as the door shakes in its frame. Frantically, they throw their entire weight against it until at long last, the door gives way. Rushing into the garden, they quickly draw their weapons and scan the perimeter. A garden overflowing with weeds and littered stonework coldly greets them with a wide embrace.
The pair were gone.
TIP: WAKE UP