Chapter 13:

Confusion

One of the most depressing characteristics of early December was, in addition to the string of tests that happened at that time, how late the sun rose. You got dressed, had breakfast and started classes in absolute darkness. It was very difficult to pay attention to the teachers when it was freezing cold outside and the fluorescent lights were the only source of light in the classrooms. And although the darkness and the cold made the start of classes for Ulrich an ordeal, like everyone else he had no choice but to get ready for breakfast. While brushing his teeth, he tried to express himself in Colgate language to his friend Odd, who had just entered the bathroom.

"Ulrich?" Asked the blonde, with an exuberance comparable to that of a chirping canary. "Are you ready yet?"

"Hmmh mhhh..." He had a mouth full of toothpaste, of course he wasn't ready.

"Do you want spaghetti?" Odd's attempts to understand the Colgate language were quite commendable, but he didn't understand the maxim of the language in question: you can't say anything that makes sense while brushing your teeth. "For breakfast?"

"Hmmh mhhh mhh..."

"With olives?" At this point, it almost seemed that instead of trying to translate what Ulrich was saying, Odd was saying what his subconscious was telling him.

Ulrich finally spit out the toothpaste and turned to his friend, with dribbles of toothpaste at the corner of his lips.

"Go on, I'll come on over later"

"Okay, see you in the cafeteria then" He replied, waving goodbye and beginning to look forward to sampling Italian cuisine. "You got me hungry with your pasta thing"

Ulrich snorted at his friend's antics. He rinsed his mouth and put the toothbrush away in the toiletry bag. Although having spaghetti for breakfast wasn't his thing, he wouldn't mind trying some warm chocolate croissants in the cafeteria.

Suddenly, the fluorescent lights in the bathroom began to flicker. Ulrich turned around slowly, just in time to see the blue light from the fluorescents begin to take the shape of a hologram eerily similar to himself.

Ulrich took a step back, horrified, but before he could scramble away, the hologram flickered and exploded in a blinding flash of blue light. When the boy opened his eyes again, he saw that he was alone in the bathroom. He blinked, puzzled. Had he imagined it all?

In the cafeteria, the ruckus of scrumping jaws and chatter of catching up before class was a perfect acoustic barrier for the gang to talk about the bizarre events that had transpired before they arrived at school. Yumi, who had decided to have breakfast with her friends in the cafeteria to tell them what had happened, started talking.

"A really strange thing happened to me at home. I was getting ready and some sort of electrical bug occurred"

Upon hearing this, Ulrich almost choked on his latte and Selina, who was on her second piece of ham toast, had to pat him on the back to keep him from choking.

"I saw something pretty weird in the bathroom too" He said, once the latte was going down the right windpipe. "It appeared out of nowhere. It was starting to take shape..."

"And just disappeared" Yumi finished for him. "I know. I saw the same thing"

"If X.A.N.A. had attempted an attack, I should have at least seen something!" Jeremy exclaimed, looking at his cell phone in bewilderment.

"You might have seen something that would have happened in Lyoko, but not in Cortex" Selina corrected him, dipping a croissant into the hot cocoa. Chocolate worked miracles when it came to keeping her alert and focused. "Because a few weeks ago X.A.N.A. gave Odd a bullshit A by testing how much he could screw up the school's electronics by acting from Cortex. And I don't know about you guys, but what Yumi and Ulrich described sounds like a specter that failed to materialize"

"You think X.A.N.A. launched an attack from Cortex?" Aelita inquired, concerned.

"Yeah, and he's having a hard time materializing specters on Earth" Replied the girl, taking a good bite of her croissant. Maybe her mom was right that pastries weren't exactly the best for a healthy diet, but the breakfast croissants were just what the doctor ordered for having enough energy for a day full of studying and possible missions to Lyoko. "Cortex may give him a window of time to create damage, but first he has to learn how to use the towers to do exactly the same things he could do from Lyoko. And right now he's going head first into the wall"

"What you say makes a lot of sense" Jeremy admitted. Selina may not have been a Physics genius, but when it came to connecting the dots she was the best. Then he turned to his friends. "After lunch we could go to the factory to check the holoscan, to see if X.A.N.A. has really launched an attack"

"Okay" Yumi said, getting up from the seat along with William. "I'd love to keep talking to you guys, but William and I have an test. See you later"

"See you later too" Replied Ulrich. "And may St. Nicholas present you with an A!"

Yumi, understanding what he meant, smiled. Today was December 6th, the day of St. Nicholas, a German Santa Claus who gave gifts to children on those dates. And at those times an A for gift was just what she needed. Although for her, the fact that Ulrich wished her well in that way was already more than enough of a gift.

If Selina were asked what her favorite parts of Mrs. Hertz's classes were, the answer would be the parts where she taught Anatomy. Sure, listening to the teacher talk about plants and their properties was very interesting, but it was nothing compared to hearing about the workings of the human body. Besides, with the project she had in mind, she needed as much information as possible and from a reliable source if she wanted the thing to come to fruition. While she was taking notes in her notebook, she glanced sideways at her friend Laura, who despite her apparently professional note-taking, looked like When is she going to finish explaining the chemical compounds that made our guts work?

"I know Laura, this is a bit of a drag" Selina looked at her friend with an understanding smile. "But at least you're lucky enough to have a top-notch brains to memorize it all in a jiffy"

Laura stopped writing for a moment and looked at the redhead with a mixture of affection and exasperation. Yes, she may have been able to memorize anything in a jiffy, but Selina had a curiosity worthy of a cat with seven lives and an insistence on asking about every detail that made her a born researcher. Of the two, Laura Gauthier was the one who got the best grades on tests, but Selina gave the best presentations and papers.

"My thing is pure memory, Selina. I don't have your talent"

"My talent?"

"Yes, your talent. I may get straight A's in everything, but you have a curiosity and logical reasoning ability that if you wanted to, you could go into scientific research"

"I'd rather go into cyber security" Replied the girl with a half smile. "And don't worry so much about writing down what the teacher says, she's going to upload the lesson in the Virtual Classroom in the afternoon"

"Thank God, I'm sick of writing down without understanding a word Mrs. Hertz says" Her eyes sparkled as she thought of her goal for the Christmas holidays, which were just around the corner. "I can't wait for the holidays to come and I can go visit the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, which is one of the best science and technology museums in France"

"I visited it once when I was ten years old on a school trip" Selina commented with a smile. "It was awesome. Although in my case my Christmas goals are much more prosaic: twelve hours of sleep in one go, catch up with my parents and maybe go to the Belgian Christmas festival with my friends, which according to various sources is a blast!"

Laura smiled at her friend's enthusiasm, but even though they spoke rather quietly their complicit smiles caught Mrs. Hertz's attention. With a frown on her face, she looked at them with that face of Enough of this nonsense, I'm the authority that she made every time her students lost the plot.

"Selina, Laura, could you share with the rest of the class that interesting thing you were talking about?"

Laura gulped, a bit scared. She was so at ease sharing her holiday plans with Selina that she had completely forgotten they were still in class. But before she could brace herself for a scolding from the teacher, Selina decided to dust off her improvisational skills.

"My apologies, Mrs. Hertz, but all that stuff you were telling us about vitamin deficiencies was very interesting, and I was telling my classmate about a medical article about niacin deficiencies in concentration camps in the early twentieth century, where roasted coffee was used to solve that vitamin deficiency in prisoners" Replied the girl with a smile worthy of a professional con artist. If Selina was going to avoid a scolding from the teacher, she could also take advantage of the opportunity to set her project in motion. The teacher, oblivious to the true intentions of her student, nodded, smiling. She had also read that article. "My question is, what vitamin deficiencies would a prisoner have today, fed on military rations and without access to fresh food on a frequent basis? I know that current science and supplements prevent the worst of vitamin deficiencies, such as pellagra, scurvy, osteomalacia and the like; but I'm sure that low-intensity but sustained vitamin stress over time would cause some recognizable signs if you see them up close. Could you enlighten me on those doubts?"

The teacher smiled, delighted at the student's interest in the lesson, and set about to clarify her doubts.

"Indeed, Selina, an ordinary prisoner, despite the medical and sanitary advances in prisons, would have some slight vitamin deficiencies that would be recognizable if you know where to look. A prisoner would be moderately deficient in vitamin B12, vitamin C, vitamin D and iron. These deficiencies would manifest themselves in the form of dry skin and cracked corners of the lips, dull and grayish skin, sparse and brittle hair, and pallor of the skin and mucous membranes due to anemia"

"Thank you very much Mrs. Hertz" Selina replied with her luminous smile, that smile that Odd knew hid the intentions of a mad scientist. "But I have another question, if the prisoner in question, were in the high mountains, like a Swiss prison, wouldn't she have some kind of iodine deficiency?" Hearing this, Aelita almost had to pick her jaw up off the floor. Now she understood what it was her friend wanted to find out with those questions. "Not as much as goiter, mind you, which if all ancestors with a diet low in iodine developed goiter, we wouldn't be here, but in my opinion something would be noticeable in her"

"Indeed, Selina" Replied Mrs. Hertz, half admiring, half intrigued at the turn the conversation was taking. "A moderate iodine deficiency would cause puffy eyes. Do you have any further questions?"

"Well, yes" Laura, who was sitting next to her, watched as Selina's friend, Aelita, and her boyfriend Jeremy looked at the redhead with gaping eyes. Selina was a mystery novel freak and maybe those questions were for making her own mystery novels. In any case, the plot of that novel was promising. At the very least, the first chapter had improvisational skills and a talent for buttering up worthy of the best of con artists. "How long would it take for such a prisoner to recover from vitamin deficiencies with a proper diet, but no vitamin supplements?"

"Between three and six months, depending on the severity of the vitamin deficiencies. Do you have any more questions? I would like to be able to continue with the lesson"

"No, Mrs. Hertz, you have told me what you wanted" Replied the girl. At last she had the information she needed to put her plan into action.

As the teacher continued with the lesson, Laura turned to Selina, a knowing smile painted on her lips.

"Selina, first thank you very much for diverting the teacher's attention. And second: have you come up with an idea for a novel in which the doctor discovers the fugitive using her vitamin deficiencies to identify her?" Joked the blonde, returning to take notes from the teacher.

"No, but the protagonist is a photographer with a medical background who knows how to alter the fugitive's photo to be identical to what she would look like after twelve years in prison, vitamin deficiencies and all"

On the way to the cafeteria for lunch, Selina felt as if she were about to testify against a mobster with evidence obtained by digging up information from under every rock. She might have gone a little out of line trying to find out from her face what Anthea would look like after being kidnapped for so long, but after X.A.N.A. indirectly announced to the world that Aelita's mother was alive and gave her clues about what had happened to her, Selina knew she had a good chance to find out what on Earth had happened to Anthea and there was no way in hell she was going to waste it. But on the other hand, she feared she had hurt Aelita's feelings by exposing in such an analytical and cold way what might have happened to her mother. Worried, she couldn't help but wonder if her habit of taking the bull by the horns this time had ended up in hurting a friend she wanted to help, but a familiar voice stopped her musings.

"Selina, can I speak to you for a moment?" At the sound of Aelita's voice, Selina had to summon all her willpower to stop her legs from burning with the overwhelming desire to run in the face of the mess that lay ahead of her. She took a deep breath and tried to smile.

"Yes, of course. What do you want to talk about?" A rather stupid question, considering Selina knew perfectly well what the pinkette wanted to tell her.

"Why are you so sure you can find my mom? She was kidnapped when I was three years old and my dad, no matter how hard he looked, never heard from her again" Aelita was hurt, but not because Selina, even if it was with the best of intentions, had stirred up such a painful part of her past, but because her friend was too optimistic about being able to find a person who disappeared so long ago and didn't want to have false hopes. "Granted, to make such a realistic specter of my mother, X.A.N.A. must have found her somehow, but..."

"Well, because I know I can do it" Replied the girl, her blue eyes shining with determination. "Although X.A.N.A. is capable of making very complex plans, when it comes to imagining people in order to get one over on someone all he can do is copy and paste and make educated guesses. By educated guesses, since the picture with your mother as a child was in black and white and with X.A.N.A. knowing you always with pink hair, Anthea's specter should have been with pink hair, but the specter had red hair, so X.A.N.A. had to do copy and paste from recent pictures of your mother, with the addition of the white dress to give the specter a more sentimental air" Aelita nodded, knowing what her friend was referring to. In her room was a picture of Aelita as a little girl with her mother, with Anthea wearing a white sundress. "And if we're going to talk about hair, the specter had great hair, the kind of hair you can only get by going weekly to a good hairdresser, plus a fairly healthy physical appearance, which is not exactly that of a recent prisoner. This means that your mother is free and leading a normal life for at least six months before X.A.N.A. awakening, which would set the minimum start date of your mother's normal life at mid to late February. And on top of that X.A.N.A. had the decency to convince you to hug the source code version of your mom by blurting out that Anthea was trapped in Switzerland for twelve years, and it actually makes a lot of sense, considering that much of the country is in the Alps and there are so many areas of the country that are completely isolated, perfect for holding someone hostage and with no chance of escape, being lost in the middle of nowhere. For giving me, he even gave me the date your mother had escaped from prison, because twelve years added to the year Anthea was kidnapped, 1990, gives me... 2002" She frowned, puzzled at her own conclusion. "How weird. That was just the year Tyron inaugurated his particle accelerator"

Aelita just wanted to tell her that although she was moved by the determination to find her mother, she did not want to have false hopes. But when Selina had begun to explain her theories, her conviction had swept her away in the same way that a spring tide sweeps away an unsuspecting bather. And then the spring tide had suddenly stopped, leaving Selina with her brow furrowed, as if she had discovered a piece of a puzzle she had overlooked.

"Selina, what's wrong with you? You look worried"

The redhead pursed her lips, not quite sure which way to turn. She never thought that after trying to find out in front of Aelita what had happened to her mother, laying out the facts in such a cold and graphic way, she could screw up even more, but it was clear that today was the day to learn new things, including things that could hurt her friends if she didn't watch her back.

"Nothing, that I just came up with a crazy theory and that I can't find out right now if my suspicions are true" That, and that if she told her friend what she suspected, Aelita would completely lose her want to lunch. "When we sort out the mess of the specters behaving like half-blown light bulbs, I'd like to ask you a few questions about your mom, okay?"

Selina resumed her walk. The trial was over, but suddenly she found herself having to testify in another, even bigger crime. But Aelita's gentle hand made her stop.

"I'm not angry with you because of the questions you asked in Mrs. Hertz's class, which I know you meant well. It's simply that after having recovered and then lost my father, I don't want the same thing to happen to my mother"

"I know, Aelita, but I know you have a good chance of seeing your mother again, and I don't have the luxury of that chance" The electric blue of her eyes had become as hard as a sapphire. "All I have are some dreams that I can't associate with people in the real world. At the Hermitage we searched and there wasn't even the slightest mention of a boy named Alex or a kidnapping in any of the members of the Project Carthage. I have nothing. You, on the other hand, have a lot. That's why I want to make the most of what you have on your mother, so you can find her. You have a good opportunity and you should take advantage of it"

Aelita sighed, looking at her friend with a mixture of compassion and admiration. Selina may never discover who she really was, but the pinkette had already discovered one of the traits that best defined her friend: that she was the antithesis of the If I was miserable, everyone else should be it too mentality. With a smile, she took her friend by the hand.

"Let's go to the cafeteria, I'm starving. And never give up, okay? I'm sure there must be something we missed at the Hermitage"

"Who knows" Selina replied, trying to push away the storm of suspicions thundering in her head and concentrating instead on the hot menu waiting for them in the cafeteria.

While outside the thermometer refused to rise more than a measly couple of degrees Celsius, in the cafeteria it was as hot as an oven. Between the kitchen running at full blast and the radiators on, everyone who entered the cafeteria recovered in a matter of seconds from the hint of hypothermia produced in the walk between the classroom building and the cafeteria. This time the menu looked very comforting: cream of vegetable soup, stewed veal with baked potatoes and for dessert, walnut and chocolate cake. Although Jeremy, Odd and Ulrich seemed to be full of energy, the same could not be said of Yumi and William, who had huge dark circles under their eyes and in William's case, was nodding off from pure sleep and was as pale as paper.

"Rough morning, huh?" Selina exclaimed as she saw the panda bear face of her friends. Yumi nodded, unable to stifle a yawn.

"God, yes, Mr Delacroix is brutal" She let out a sigh. Although she knew that at Lyoko all her tiredness would be washed away, in those moments Yumi was tempted to find out the limits of caffeine consumption that were compatible with life. "If it hadn't been for William giving me a hand, I would flunked the History test. I still don't understand where the guy gets so much energy from"

"Worst of all, besides giving us homework by the bucketful, when we say it's too much, he says we're a bunch of crybabies and lazy bums" William mumbled. Throughout the week he had gotten by on little more than six hours of sleep, and just thinking about finding out what the hell was going on at Lyoko, the sleep deprivation hangover he had accumulated made his head ring like cathedral bells. "Mr Delacroix goes on and on about how when he was our age everyone worked twice or three times as hard and no one complained, and that all we have to do is suck it up. I hate this guy"

Odd smiled sympathetically at him. Some teachers were the stuff that nightmares were made of. And though Mr Delacroix had never taught him, he knew enough of desperate protests from the upper grades to wonder if the man had chosen teaching simply because it was the only way he could practice psychological torture without being locked up.

"I'm sorry, man. By the way, are you sure your teacher is from here?" From traveling the world so much with his family Odd had already become accustomed to identifying accents from various parts of the world. "I've heard him speak and he's got a really thick American accent"

"Well, he and his parents actually went to the United States when he was a kid and he went to school there. When he finished college he went back to France and started teaching" And possibly zombifying his students due to lack of sleep caused by the workload, Odd thought with a wry grimace on his face. "I don't give a fuck that he studied at Columbia University. I just want to sleep"

"Are you feeling that bad?" Asked Jeremy worriedly.

"I'm very tired, but between the History test and Lyoko I'm so full of adrenaline that I couldn't sleep even if I wanted to" He looked at Yumi worriedly. "Besides, with a hint of a spectre deciding to pay Yumi and Ulrich a surprise visit, I can't afford to take a nap"

Selina, who was polishing off her stewed veal, looked at him with pity. It had happened to her, too, that when too many papers came together before test dates, she would stay up until late at night finishing everything so that during test dates she would have time to study. A week of six or seven hours of sleep every night running on pure caffeine, adrenaline and basically being a stubborn bitch, and when the weekend came, she would crash like a Boeing 747.

But suddenly, her head snapped back to one detail: that Mr Delacroix had spent the first part of his life in America. Judging by his appearance, Mr Delacroix must have been in his sixties, which meant that his time as a student had occurred in the 1960s. And in the 1960s in the United States, Desoxyn (a type of meth) was given out like candy. Suddenly understanding Mr. Delacroix's display of energy, Selina laughed so hard that she almost fell off her chair.

"Selina, what's so funny?" Yumi inquired in bewilderment as she watched her friend laughing hysterically.

"Nothing, nothing, that I just found out that your teacher is the embodiment of a Rolling Stones song" Mother's Little Helper, although in this case it should be Student's Little Helper, Selina thought as she tried to stop laughing. Once she calmed down a bit, she added. "Well, I think you guys need a little help before the virtualization ginger you up" She finished her walnut and chocolate cake and walked over to the bar, where the cook was tending to the students. "Rosa, could you make me two Italian espressos and get me two Lindt 70% cocoa chocolate bars? I have friends who badly need a combination of short and long lasting caffeine so they can stay alert for the rest of the afternoon. Put it on my tab, please"

Arriving at the lab, the gang found that the Holomap of the Supercomputer was completely clean, with no trace of activated towers. Jeremy let out a sigh of relief. Maybe what had happened with Yumi and Ulrich was nothing more than a false alarm.

"Nothing, nothing at all" He muttered, a bit puzzled. Selina looked at William with a half smile. At last her friend could really take a nap. "My app is working, everything is quiet on Lyoko"

Although Jeremy's optimism was quite touching, there was one thing he had never understood: not to claim victory before its time. Suddenly, a flash of red appeared on the Holomap, too brief for only Odd's curious eyes, and to a lesser extent, Selina's inquisitive ones, to notice the presence of an activated tower.

"There!" Shouted the blond. "An activated tower!"

"Where?" All Jeremy saw was a pristine image of the Holomap, but Odd was pretty sure he saw an activated tower, if only for a moment.

"Just there, there was something for a split second" Selina looked at the Holomap, puzzled. She had the feeling that something was eluding her. But while Selina was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, Odd was doing his best to convince Jeremy that he wasn't seeing things. "I'm sure I saw it!"

Jeremy was beginning to wonder if Odd had made a mistake when another flash of red appeared on the Holomap, this time lasting long enough for everyone to see that there was a tower activated.

"There, again!" Odd noted. This time, he was definitely not seeing things.

"Yes, you're right!" Jeremy exclaimed when he saw that red dot on the Holomap. "There's an activated tower in the Mountain sector"

"And another one in the Desert" Ulrich added as he watched another flash of red appear on the Holomap.

"What does this mean?" For Aelita, all of this made no sense. "Why do they keep activating and deactivating?"

"Maybe your Superscan is on the blink" Odd suggested, but Jeremy glared at him. "Well, it was just a thought"

"It's possible" Jeremy admitted, not entirely convinced. "But after what Ulrich and Yumi saw this morning, I'd rather say these are short attacks"

Or that X.A.N.A.'s Internet connection between Cortex and Lyoko to be able to launch attacks is failing for some reason, thought Selina, with a frown on her face and her head running at full speed. While the possibility that X.A.N.A. was launching an attack from Cortex but had no idea how to use the towers was definitely out of the question, she now had a new mystery to solve: What the hell was going on in Cortex that X.A.N.A. couldn't launch attacks from Lyoko?

"Do you think it's another of X.A.N.A.'s tricks?" Aelita asked, looking at the Holomap with concern.

"The only way to find out is by going to Lyoko" Jeremy replied. Then he looked at his friends. "Are you ready?"

Ulrich nodded and along with Odd, Yumi and William went to the scanner room. As the elevator doors closed, Jeremy turned to Aelita and Selina, with the latter having a frown on her face and her mind running a mile a minute.

"Meanwhile we'll check the superscan program" Said the boy, as he began to prepare the virtualization protocol.

"We'll take care of it" Aelita assured him, pulling out her laptop, while Selina did the same. Her plan was simple enough: check the Holomap for bugs and then ask a little tidbit of nothing. How could X.A.N.A. activate towers on Lyoko while technically stowing away on Cortex?

The elevator doors opened and Yumi, Ulrich, Odd and William entered the scanner room.

"Are you ready?" Jeremy's voice echoed through the speakers. They had agreed that to find out what was going on, Odd and William would go to the Desert Sector and Yumi and Ulrich would go to the Mountain Sector. "I'll transfer you to two sectors"

He typed a combination on his keyboard and the virtualization process began.

"Transfer: Odd; Transfer William"

William smiled as he felt the increasingly familiar tingling sensation run through his body.

"Scanner: Odd; Scanner William. Virtualization!"

Next thing they knew, they were in the Desert Sector, with the horizon being a palette of gold and ochre tones, horizon that William could appreciate now that his eyes didn't feel like they had been glued shut. Back in the lab, it was now Ulrich and Yumi's turn.

"Now it's your turn guys" Jeremy announced over the speakers. Ulrich and Yumi stepped into the scanners. "Transfer: Ulrich; Transfer Yumi"

Yumi closed her eyes as the scanner doors closed, more out of drowsiness than to avoid being dazzled by the scanner's light at the moment of virtualization.

"Scanner: Ulrich; Scanner Yumi. Virtualization!"

Yumi and Ulrich landed in the Mountain sector with the agility of a cat. The ninja looked around and breathed a sigh of relief as her drowsiness and headache suddenly disappeared. Apparently virtualization in Lyoko wiped away fatigue better than any cup of coffee.

"So, which way should we go?" Ulrich inquired, scanning the horizon for any clues that would indicate the presence of X.A.N.A.

"Don't know yet" Jeremy replied, looking at the Holomap, which was as quiet as a museum on Monday mornings. "Just wait, I've got nothing for the moment but it should come soon"

"Okay, I'm ready" The boy replied, unsheathing his katanas, and Yumi did the same with the fans.

"Forget about it, Ulrich. I feel it will be for me" Odd replied from the Desert sector, stretching his muscles as if he were in P.E. class. "I better not strain any muscle"

"You are an avatar, you can't pull a muscle!" Ulrich replied, exasperated.

"You never know!" Odd replied as he stood in the same position as a runner waiting for the starting gun. William, who was standing next to him, shook his head. He too hated being on standby waiting for X.A.N.A. to do his thing again, but when a tower was activated all he would have to do was activate his Super Smoke up there. "And you'll see how fast I am, I'll be there before you can even start"

Just then a red dot appeared on the Holomap, giving the starting signal to Odd and William.

"A tower just activated" Before Jeremy could finish the sentence, Odd and William had already taken off running, with the purple cat gaining the speed of a cheetah and the dark knight had transformed into a wisp of black smoke. "In the Mountain Sector" Hearing this Odd slammed on his brakes like a motorcyclist to avoid crashing into the road guardrail while William went from gaseous to solid in the blink of an eye. "Ulrich, Yumi, go ahead"

"Nooo!" Odd protested, like a kid discovering that the bag of goodies to be handed out had been completely emptied and there was nothing left for him. "Really not cool" Beside him, William looked at him with pity. Although Odd's super cat reflexes were a great help in avoiding tripping and eating virtual sand from the Desert sector, in real life if Odd braked like that, he would have hit the ground face first. "I was all set!"

"Sorry Odd, but we'll be there before you after all" Ulrich replied as he stomped on the Overbike's throttle, with Yumi gliding alongside him on the Overwing.

Within seconds a reddish silhouette appeared on the horizon of the Mountain Sector. It was the tower.

"I see it!" Yumi exclaimed, looking around to see if there were any monsters guarding the tower. "We'll be there in a few seconds!"

"Of course" Odd grumbled, sitting on a rock. Beside him, William was sharpening his sword against the flat surface of another rock. "With an Overbike and an Overwing, it's too easy. That's not fair"

In the lab, Selina, who was going through the Holomap program from cover to cover to find out if there were any bugs in it, couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Jeremy could also have materialized the Overboard and thus prevented Odd from having to make do with his legs to reach the activated tower. But before she could tell Odd that she agreed with him, the activated tower vanished from the Holomap.

"Not again!" Jeremy exclaimed, frustrated.

Aelita looked up from her laptop and her eyes widened when she saw that the activated tower was no longer on the Holomap.

"Ulrich, Yumi" Said the pinkette, having no idea what was going on. What was X.A.N.A. up to? "It looks like the tower is going to deactivate"

Hearing this, the samurai and the ninja stopped dead in their tracks, just in time to see the tower deactivate and return to its characteristic bluish-white hue.

"Indeed" Ulrich muttered, still brandishing his katanas to make sure X.A.N.A didn't catch him off guard. "It just deactivated"

Jeremy stared at the Holomap, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with those towers magically turning on and off.

"What is the purpose of these short-lived attacks?" He muttered in bewilderment, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Maybe setting up for a bigger one?" Aelita suggested. She had no idea what was going on, but a brainstorm would be a good way to start figuring out what X.A.N.A. was up to.

Selina, who had just finished reviewing the Holomap program, frowned in concern. There was no trace of a virus in the Holomap's system that warned of the presence of activated towers, so X.A.N.A was really activating those towers. The problem was that he couldn't seem to activate them for more than a few minutes. Two theories were beginning to form in her head, the first very worrisome and the second a crazy one that made a lot of sense. She took a deep breath and began to speak.

"One of two things, guys. Either X.A.N.A. is crying wolf and waiting for us to get fed up with these activated towers that look like half-melted light bulbs and then he activates one that is going to give us hell to pay; or something very strange is happening in Cortex that is preventing him from activating towers in Lyoko" Selina said, looking very serious at Aelita and Jeremy. Regarding the last theory she wasn't entirely sure, but a few basic questions might confirm her suspicions. "Jeremy, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe X.A.N.A. is both in Lyoko and Cortex. In Cortex is the cognitive part of X.A.N.A., the thinking and rational part that decides which is the best way to screw us when it comes to activating this or that tower" Jeremy nodded as if to tell her You're good, keep it up. "And in Lyoko is the executive part of X.A.N.A., the one in charge of activating towers and launching attacks. But if for some reason, the cognitive part of X.A.N.A. were blocked, that would make it impossible for him to transmit the necessary orders so that the executive part of X.A.N.A. could maintain an activated tower in Lyoko"

Jeremy looked at her dumbstruck. Although Selina had a habit of going off on a tangent, that tangent had often hit the mark. But before he could ponder the implications of what Selina was suggesting, Odd's voice brought him out of his thoughts.

"Einstein, could you try to translate for me what Selina just said? I didn't understand a word of it"

"X.A.N.A. due to a traffic accident is paralyzed from the neck down" Jeremy explained, trying to find an understandable analogy. "Moving a limb is the equivalent of launching an attack. But if he has broken his spine, although he wants to move his leg, because of the spinal cord damage he cannot do so"

"Okay" Odd leaned back on a rock as if it were a deck chair. "You know what? Honestly, I feel pretty good here and I think I could even take a nap"

"Odd, William, this time it's for you guys!" Jeremy's voice brought Odd out of nap mode on the spot. "Another tower just activated in your sector!"

Before Jeremy could tell them where the activated tower was, Odd was already running like hell, with William in the background shaking his head. While he wasn't in a position to cast the first stone with that Shoot first, ask questions later thing, even he knew that to accomplish a mission you first had to figure out where you needed to go.

"Where is it? Where is it?" Odd asked loudly, running like a runaway horse.

"To the east, inside the canyon" Jeremy replied, causing Odd to stop dead in his tracks and then run in the other direction. As William activated his Super Smoke and shot off in the indicated direction, Jeremy materialized the Overboard. "I think you'll go faster with that"

"Thanks, Jeremy!" Odd shouted as he jumped onto the Overboard.

William, now knowing where they had to go, activated his Super Smoke and within seconds he was a black wisp of smoke running alongside the Overboard.

"Cross-country is not my thing after all. I prefer snowboarding in the sand!" Odd exclaimed as he did a frontflip worthy of a gold medal at the Winter Olympics, hurtling across the ochre and gold expanses of the Desert Sector at full throttle.

Within minutes Odd and William had reached the vicinity of the activated tower, landing on top of an overlook made of rocks. William regained his normal form as Odd got off the Overboard and looked around, seeing that the activated tower was guarded by three Krabs.

"We've got a nice reception committee here: Three big Krabs!" Odd announced with a wry grin. "Usually I prefer them with some butter, but plain crabs are fine too!"

Jeremy smiled slightly at his friend's joke, but he knew it was ill-advised for him and William to take on three Krabs on their own. He cleared his throat and turned to his friends who were in the Mountain Sector.

"Ulrich, Yumi, go and join them" He asked a bit concerned. "There's a way tower for us to the north-east"

The samurai and the ninja nodded and shot off in the direction Jeremy was asking them to go. Back at the lab, Selina clenched her fists in frustration. She was sick of watching X.A.N.A. run them in circles even though he was completely crippled in Cortex. She was becoming more and more certain that something very strange was going on at Cortex, but she had no way of proving it. It was easier to believe that those activated towers were X.A.N.A. crying wolf.

But a wolf howls until he is silenced.

She had just had an idea, but to put it into practice she needed Aelita's help. Selina approached her pinkette friend, who was looking at her laptop in search of any details about the Holomap that she had missed.

"Aelita, is it true that you can detect X.A.N.A.'s presence in Lyoko through the pulsations, that sort of alternating current that runs through Lyoko when X.A.N.A. has awakened?" Aelita looked at her as Of course, what silly questions you ask. "I say that because I think I've come up with a way to find out what exactly is happening to X.A.N.A. If the pulsations indicate X.A.N.A.'s presence, its absence would indicate that he's inactive" Aelita nodded, beginning to understand what her friend was getting at. "If the tower in the Desert Sector deactivated itself but pulsations could still be seen, that would mean that X.A.N.A. is in a dormant state, waiting for the optimal moment to attack. But if the tower deactivates itself and the pulsations disappear, it means that X.A.N.A. has been inactivated and not exactly by his own will. Would it be possible for you to see the pulsations on the ground through real-time video of what's going on in the Desert Sector?"

"It is possible, yes. Indeed, it's very possible" Aelita replied, grinning from ear to ear. At last they had a way to find out what the hell was going on in Lyoko. Then she turned to Jeremy. "Jeremy, could you pass me a real-time video of what's happening in the Desert Sector, where Odd is? I need to check something"

Jeremy, who had overheard the conversation between Aelita and Selina, typed into the Supercomputer and a video image of the Desert sector appeared on Aelita's laptop. On the ground, some sort of whitish energy waves could be seen converging on the activated tower. They were the pulsations. But Jeremy had never seen pulsations of that whitish hue.

"How strange" Aelita muttered. Those faded pulsations made her think of the electrocardiogram of a person in heart failure. "Normally the pulsations are reddish. It's like X.A.N.A. is sick"

Selina nodded, looking intently at the laptop screen. Despite not having the same connection to X.A.N.A as Aelita, she too could sense that X.A.N.A. was in trouble, as if something in Cortex had taken away his voice and all he could get to Lyoko were incoherent sentences. In the Desert Sector, oblivious to everything, Odd and William were putting the finishing touches on their plan of attack.

"You take care of the tower, I'll attack them from behind" William assured Odd. If he used his Super Smoke and cut off the Krabs' legs, they wouldn't stand a chance of fighting back.

Odd nodded and jumped on the Overboard, launching himself kamikaze-like towards the Krabs, while William transformed himself into a wisp of black smoke and flew over the Desert Sector, whose pulsations began to become weaker and weaker, almost impossible to perceive amidst the intense ochre of the terrain.

"Either I'm very wrong or I think that tower is going to be deactivated at any moment" Aelita thought aloud, watching as the pulsations grew weaker and weaker.

And so it was. William and Odd launched themselves at full speed towards the tower, with Odd firing a barrage of laser arrows at the Krab in front of him. But before the laser arrows could reach the monster, it and its buddies exploded into a million pieces. Taken by surprise, Odd lost control and flew off the Overboard. He rolled to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust in his wake.

"Odd, are you okay?" Ulrich shouted from the Mountain Sector, concerned.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Ulrich" Odd replied, still a bit dazed, rubbing his head. William, hearing his friend's cry, had regained his human form and helped him up. Looking up, Odd was amazed to see the tower regain its usual bluish-white hue. "But that's really strange, I didn't do anything and the tower deactivated itself"

"Jeremy, what do you think is going on?" Yumi asked, unable to understand those towers turning on and off as if it were all a game of musical chairs.

"I don't know, it's crazy, it looks like X.A.N.A. is bugging!"

"You don't say!" Aelita exclaimed, laptop in hand. On the screen Jeremy could see how the ground of the Desert Sector had no trace of pulsations. "The pulsations were already very weird before, but now they've just vanished!"

Jeremy leaned back, trying to make sense of it all. What Selina had said about the cognitive and executive parts of X.A.N.A. and how they worked back then had been a very good explanation, but it was still too premature to make sense of what was going on. But now it was very clear to him that something had happened in Cortex that had left X.A.N.A. completely crippled.

"I think X.A.N.A. is having serious problems in Cortex, as if some kind of firewall has been activated" Jeremy said at last. Of the products of his brainstorming, that seemed the most likely. "In my opinion we should go take a look at it" Then he turned to his friends. "I'm going to activate the Transport Orb to take you to Sector 5, okay?" As he typed the SCIPIO code, he turned to Aelita. "Aelita, go to the scanner room, please"

The pinkette nodded and headed for the elevator. Selina watched the scene with a slight pang of envy. Although she was proud that she had helped her friends to find out, if only in part, what the hell was going on, she wished for more than just being Jeremy's right-hand woman on missions to Lyoko and Cortex.

"Selina, if it's all right with you, I'd like to virtualise you on Cortex" The girl blinked, unable to believe her ears. Had she heard wrong, or had Jeremy really said that?

"What, are you serious?"

"Dead serious. Look, Selina, I'm going to speak frankly. You've been a first-rate help on missions, and a lot of times if it wasn't for you we would have ended up screwed. But after that Ninja who sneaked into Lyoko, it's become clear to me that you're better at solving problems inside the Supercomputer than outside of it" The redhead smiled slightly. Yes, she was good at solving problems, but only because she saw details that others had overlooked. If not for that, she would be completely useless. "And considering that something has happened at Cortex that is affecting X.A.N.A., having you and your improvisational skills fully participating in the mission would be fantastic"

"Okay, but how will you materialize me in Cortex?" Selina did her best to stay calm, even though euphoria was coming out of her ears. "There's not room for everyone in the Skid"

"Don't worry, when the Skid docks at Cortex, I plan to use it as a reference point to virtualize you. Besides, in the Megapod there are six seats, so you won't travel to the core unprotected"

"I see you've got it all figured out, huh" Said the girl smiling. Then she turned to her friends, who were cruising the Digital Sea aboard the Skid. "Hey guys, how are things going at the bottom of the sea?"

"This is quieter than a museum on a Monday morning" Odd replied, almost lulled to sleep by the serene blue hue of the Digital Sea, with no immediate threats now that X.A.N.A. was out of action, at least for a while. "But with X.A.N.A. having problems, this may be the last time we go to Cortex"

That's what you think, we still have to find out what the hell happened to Aelita's mom and her brother, and who Lowell Tyron really is. Selina replied mentally. The rest of the Skid's occupants also thought Odd was getting ahead of himself, though for different reasons.

"No need to get carried away, Odd" William warned him. X.A.N.A. may have been down with the flu, but one always recovered from the flu.

But Odd's imagination had become a runaway horse.

"Can you imagine? No more Krabs shooting at you, no more Tarantulas devirtualizing you..." He let out a sigh of contentment. "The Lyoko Warriors will retire at last!"

"Really?" Ulrich said, chuckling. That seemed too good to be true. "And what do you intend to do with your free time?"

"I'll devote myself entirely to Samantha" Odd replied. He may not have had a dime to his name after the rose fiasco, but he could always at the Kadic Academy winter festival sing a romantic Christmas song to Samantha.

"Well, I feel sorry for her"

"Very funny" Odd may have made a fool of himself chasing after Samantha, but at least he wasn't doing the even greater foolishness of not being honest with himself and asking out the girl he liked, as in the case of Ulrich and Yumi.

"What do think about that, Yumi?" William knew that even though X.A.N.A. was sick, the battle was not over.

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched" The girl replied. She wasn't sure it was all over either.

A few seconds later, the Skid emerged from the depths of the Digital Sea. In the lab, Selina looked at Jeremy and he nodded: it was time to go to the scanner room. The girl called the elevator and within seconds she was in front of one of the scanners.

"I'm ready, Jeremy!" Announced Selina from inside the scanner. "You can initiate the virtualization protocol"

"Okay" He began typing into the Supercomputer. The scanner doors closed and Selina began to feel that strange but welcome tingling sensation run through her entire body. "Transfer Selina. Scanner Selina. Virtualization!"

One of the rules Selina had set for herself when she was little was that when jumping from the top of trees, in addition to doing it at a lower height than a cat would be meowing in terror, you had to make sure there was no one under the tree. The height at which she had been virtualized in Cortex had allowed Selina to comply with the first rule but not the second. She landed on all fours, like a cat, almost squashing Odd, who had no idea of the surprise guest.

"Hey! Be a little more careful!" Exclaimed Odd as Selina landed on top of him like a 108-pound sandbag on his shoulder.

"My apologies for the improper landing" Replied the girl, tossing her red-haired braid over her shoulder. Then she turned to the sky. "Jeremy, I'm already on Cortex, could you put us on the Megapod?"

"Coming up!" Jeremy typed in a combination and in a jiffy the Megapod appeared. Before she knew it, Selina was inside the vehicle, in the last row of seats, next to William. Odd put his foot down on the accelerator and the Megapod shot across the surface of Cortex. "From now on, I need you to be my eyes. I want to see and know everything that is happening"

"Got it" Odd replied, with that smile that heralded trouble. "Aelita is sitting next to me. And in the middle row" Although he didn't have eyes in the back of his head, Odd had an idea of what Ulrich and Yumi were doing."I don't know what they're doing. Probably holding their hands" As soon as he said this, Yumi gave him a slap that left his neck red-hot. "Ouch!"

"Jeremy only needs the important things" Yumi warned him, with a look that would scare the shit out of a seasoned general.

"I second that" Ulrich's solidarity was admirable, but his slaps were most unpleasant.

"Ouch!" At this rate Odd was going to get whiplash. "You're worse than Krabs!"

Selina, who was at the back of the Megapod, ignored Odd's teasing and closed her eyes, trying to activate that sixth sense that alerted her to hidden presences. The Megapod may not have had windows, but she herself was radar. She leaned back in the seat and took a deep breath, focusing on the sounds coming from outside. If X.A.N.A. or Tyron tried to attack the Megapod, she would be the first to know.

Jeremy stretched out on the seat of the Supercomputer, trying to shake off the drowsiness that was beginning to cover him like a blanket. After several weeks of struggling upstream with X.A.N.A. and tests before Christmas break, any soft, squishy surface was an ideal place to nap. And among those surfaces was the couch in front of the Supercomputer, with the lab being so quiet you could hear even your own thoughts. Luckily, those thoughts were loud enough to keep Jeremy alert.

"Jeremy?" Odd's voice wiped away the traces of drowsiness he had left. "We have a problem here"

"What's going on?"

Jeremy was prepared for anything but that.

The unthinkable.

"I know you're not going to believe me" Said Yumi, who also could not believe her eyes. "But a Krab and a Ninja are fighting"

"Against who?"

"Each other" She replied, watching flabbergasted as the Krab tried to target shoot the Ninja.

"The Krab seems to be the attacker" Ulrich muttered, watching as the Ninja merely dodged the Krab's shots, as if he wasn't in the mood to put up with its bullshit.

"But why would X.A.N.A. attack Tyron, since he gets access to the network thanks to him?" Jeremy exclaimed, not understanding anything. In Cortex the Ninja had tried to jump into the Krab's shell to thrust his katanas at it, but a laser devirtualized him in mid-air. "It makes no sense"

"It's true that X.A.N.A. has access to the network thanks to Tyron, but nothing tells us that Tyron knew and took advantage of the fact that he has a psychotic AI in his virtual world" Selina said, realizing an important detail of all the incidents that occurred in the missions in Cortex. "Every time you went to Cortex, either a squad of Ninjas attacked you or a swarm of X.A.N.A.'s monsters, but never both at the same time. And considering we're a pain in Tyron's ass, I think he'd be glad to have a stowaway to solve all his problems" Selina looked at the Krab who seemed to say to the pixel remnants of the newly devirtualized Ninja Good riddance, you sucker! "But judging by how the Krab just played target practice with the Ninja, it looks to me like Tyron has discovered his stowaway and right now these two are beating the crap out of each other"

Jeremy, blinked, beginning to understand what Selina meant. Since they had discovered Cortex, there had never really been any indication that Tyron was allied with X.A.N.A. True, the two were equally bent on reducing the Lyoko Warriors to virtual phosphatin, but there was nothing to indicate that the two were allies. Until now he had believed that X.A.N.A.'s relationship with Tyron was one of commensalism, but now he was beginning to wonder if X.A.N.A. wasn't actually parasitizing Cortex and Tyron had discovered it.

"Anyway, the score is now 1-0 for X.A.N.A." Odd commented, watching as the Krab headed for Cortex's core.

"The Krab is heading into the core" Ulrich observed, intrigued. "What should we do, Jeremy?"

"Follow it" He replied without hesitation. "We need to find out what he's doing there"

"Certainly not sightseeing, judging from the way he handled the Ninja" Odd commented, watching as the Krab disappeared inside Cortex's core.

"I have no idea what awaits you inside" Jeremy murmured, his voice carrying the fear of the unknown. Hearing those words, Selina pursed her lips in concern. She did have an idea of what was in store for them. "So be careful"

William unsheathed his sword and approached the gates to the Cortex core, but there was no one guarding the entrance.

"I can't see the Krab" He muttered, puzzled.

"It probably teleported itself to the core" Yumi replied, pulling out her fans. The entrance to the Cortex core was deserted, but she knew very well that this was just the calm before the storm.

Selina made her blades appear and ran towards the teleportation platform, ready to take on anything. But when she reached the top of the core, she got the surprise of her life. Several squads of Krabs and Tarantulas were firing on a group of Ninjas, who were trying to protect the core interface.

"Jeremy, you won't believe this, but X.A.N.A. has sent his heavyweights to fight the Ninjas!" Exclaimed Ulrich, unable to believe his eyes.

"Where are the Ninjas?"

"They're near the central interface" He frowned, puzzled. "It looks like they're protecting it"

"The interface?" Jeremy wrinkled his nose, unable to believe his friend's words. That didn't make any sense at all. "X.A.N.A. needs the supercomputer to access the network. Why would he try to destroy it?"

"If X.A.N.A. wants to self-destruct, we should let him do it" Odd sentenced, shaking his head.

"I wish it were that easy, but I doubt it" Replied the blond genius, concerned. "X.A.N.A. must have some reason"

Selina frowned. She knew Jeremy's question was the right one, and she had the answer on the tip of her tongue, but every time she made an attempt to open her mouth, the answer eluded her. X.A.N.A. wanted to survive and thrive, then why had he sent the Seventh Cavalry to take out Cortex's core interface?

However, she had no time to think about it. A strange creaking sound made her turn sharply, just in time to see a Krab materialize. But before the monster could fire, Selina threw one of her silver blades at it, devirtualizing it on the spot.

"Good reflexes!" Yumi complimented her. A second later and the Japanese girl would have ended up back in the scanner.

A second later, a Tarantula's laser passed within inches of Aelita's head. The pinkette threw an energy field at the monster, devirtualizing it, but dozens of lasers avenged the destruction of a teammate. X.A.N.A. had discovered them.

"They noticed us!" Odd kept firing laser arrows in an attempt to keep the Krabs and Tarantulas at bay.

Ulrich jumped on a Krab and stabbed it with his katanas, while Yumi launched her fans towards the Tarantulas. Odd jumped to a lower platform and filled a Krab with laser arrows. William jumped to a lower platform to face a squad of Krabs, but a Ninja decided to follow him. Selina, who was dodging the Krabs shots as she jumped from Tarantula to Tarantula, stabbing them with her blades, saw out of the corner of her eye as the Ninja approached William from behind.

"William, watch out!"

Too late. Before William could react, the Ninja carved him up like a common roast. But that evil Green Lantern copy didn't get away with it either. By attacking William from behind, he had put himself in range of the Krab squad, who shot at him as soon as he had devirtualized the dark-haired boy.

"Now I'm really looking forward to finding out what the hell X.A.N.A. is doing" Jeremy muttered, blown away at the sight of how a Krab had shot the Ninja who had devirtualized William. Although X.A.N.A. used to make it a priority to wipe out the Lyoko Warriors in any way possible, today that priority was way down the list compared to taking out the Ninjas in order to gain access to the Cortex core interface.

Selina, who was a blue lightning jumping from Tarantula to Tarantula, all of them quickly stabbed and devirtualized, paused to think about Jeremy's words. Yes, X.A.N.A. must have been itching to get access to the Cortex core interface if he considered the Lyoko Warriors as mere gadflies. But if the Ninjas were hell-bent on eliminating the Lyoko Warriors, since they were just as much of an intruder as X.A.N.A., and X.A.N.A. wanted to take out the Ninjas at all costs to gain access to the Cortex core interface, that meant that all Selina had to do to get rid of them was to get the Ninjas and the X.A.N.A. monsters to kill each other.

With a huge nutty grin on her face, Selina jumped down to the lower platform, right where the Ninjas were, who couldn't believe that the girl had put herself on a plate. They ran after the redhead, katanas in hand, but what they didn't realize was that while the Ninjas were chasing Selina, they had put themselves in range of the Krabs and the Tarantulas, who started shooting at the Ninjas as they were rubber duckies at a fair.

"Selina, have you gone stark raving mad?" Yumi shouted as she threw her fans at a Krab. "You can't give two enemies the slip at once!"

"Of course I can!" Replied the girl, with the Ninjas hot on their heels. Before the monster could react, Selina jumped onto the head of a Tarantula and used it as a step to access an upper platform. "Deep down, both X.A.N.A. and we want exactly the same thing: to get rid of the Ninjas" The Ninjas who had been closest to attacking Selina ended up face-to-face with the Tarantula, who devirtualized them on the spot. "And to Tyron we and X.A.N.A. are the same kind of intruders. Why not use that to our advantage?"

While Yumi thought Selina was as nutty as a fruitcake, Odd, who was sick of dodging the Ninjas' katanas, what his red-haired friend said was too good a plan to ignore. He had two platforms below him, a Krab eager to practice shooting anything that moved, and a platform above him with two Ninjas who had noticed his presence and were going to attack him at any moment. It was clear what he had to do.

Before the Ninjas landed on the platform where Odd was, the purple cat had already jumped to the platform immediately below. The Ninjas jumped behind him, realizing that he wanted to flee to the next platform. What they didn't realize was that Odd, while jumping to the platform where the Krab was, had changed direction in mid-air and landed on a nearby platform. The Ninjas landed right in front of the Krab, and before they could think where Odd had been hiding, the Krab's shots devirtualized them.

"Hell, yes!" Those were the last Ninjas left. It seemed unbelievable that just by running in circles he and Selina had managed to get rid of that evil copies of Green Lantern. "You're not so tough, now, are you, Tyron? Ahhh!"

Odd had made a fatal mistake: losing sight of what was going on around him. The Krab that had devirtualized the Ninjas had noticed the presence of the purple cat and with a couple of shots had sent Odd back to the scanner room.

"It can't be, you will all get devirtualized!" Although they didn't have to worry about the Ninjas now, Jeremy was afraid of what might happen if X.A.N.A. materialized more monsters.

"They're doing their best, Jeremy!" William assured him. "And if you ask me, it's much better that they have to face a bunch of Krabs and Tarantulas rather than deal with the Ninjas"

"It wasn't a critic" Jeremy frowned, concerned. "I simply don't understand why X.A.N.A. is so obsessed with accessing the Cortex core interface to the point that Selina was able to play him like a fiddle"

Aelita also didn't understand the source of X.A.N.A.'s obsession with accessing the Cortex interface, but at that time she didn't care. She was fighting, period. She activated her wings and launched herself at the Krab that had devirtualized Odd, throwing several energy fields at it. The monster exploded, but before the pixels of its destruction could fade, the pinkette was already attacking the monsters most likely to catch her friends off guard.

"Yumi, watch out!" A Tarantula had jumped onto a platform that would allow it to be able to finish off the Japanese girl in the blink of an eye.

The ravenette, already warned, launched her fans against the Tarantula, devirtualizing it. Meanwhile, Ulrich was Supersprinting from Krab to Krab, plunging his katanas into its shell. Selina jumped from Tarantula to Tarantula like a little girl jumping from stone to stone to cross a river, even if she destroyed those stones on her way. Before a Krab on one of the upper platforms could even think of attacking Aelita, Selina had already unsheathed her blades and leapt at the monster, devirtualizing it on the spot. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see how another Krab leaned out from the edge of the platform it was on to see everything that was happening below it, specifically Ulrich with his back to the monster while making short work of the remaining Tarantulas. It was the perfect time to strike.

That's what you think, asshole!

Although Selina was too far away to attack the Krab, she wasn't going to let that stop her. Just as the Krab leaned forward in attack position, ready to shoot Ulrich, the redhead pulled out one of her blades and threw it at the monster, severing its front legs. Deprived of its foothold, the Krab lost its balance and fell into the void, exploding into a thousand pixels as it hit the ground.

"Thank you so much, Selina!" Ulrich exclaimed, once he had gotten rid of the remaining monsters. Had it not been for his friend's quick thinking, he would have been devirtualized without ever finding out what had happened.

"You're welcome, that's what friends are for" Replied the girl as she sheathed her blades. Then she turned to Jeremy, who couldn't wait to pry into Cortex's core and find out what the hell had made X.A.N.A. suddenly change his priorities. "Jeremy, we've taken care of X.A.N.A. What do we have to do now?"

"Go to the interface" In Aelita's hands appeared the digital key that gave access to the Cortex core data. The pinkette approached the core's interface and inserted the card, which swallowed it as if it were an ATM. "We need to find out what happened at Cortex"

Now that the adrenaline rush of the fight was wearing off, Selina could concentrate better on everything that had happened. There was something about Cortex that had prevented X.A.N.A. from activating towers in Lyoko. The cognitive part of X.A.N.A. had been unable to communicate with the executive part of X.A.N.A., leaving him paralyzed in Cortex. Just like the polio virus crippling a small child and locking him in an iron lung. Fortunately, the polio vaccine had been available since the 1950s, preventing thousands and thousands of children from becoming wheelchair-bound.

But X.A.N.A. is a virus. A computer virus. And what is it that blocks computer viruses?

It was so obvious that Selina couldn't understand how she hadn't thought of it before. A firewall. Tyron had activated a firewall on Cortex. Cortex was a highly sophisticated virtual world, but its network isolation sucked. At one point Tyron had realized how dangerous that was and had installed a firewall to protect Cortex from potential threats, but by then X.A.N.A. had already begun parasitizing the proceeds of Tyron's theft from Franz Hopper. Selina gave a crooked smile at the thought of Tyron. The guy was a genius who knew nothing and a spy who would make Johnny English look like James Bond. Whoever the criminal organization was that paid Tyron to spy on Franz Hopper, they should demand a reimbursement. If Tyron had been a little more on the ball he would have discovered that his former research colleague had created a multi-agent system that had gone haywire. But apparently he was too busy enjoying his particle accelerator and swimming in piles of greenbacks to realize that Cortex was going to be squatted on sooner or later.

"So, Einstein?" Odd's voice was the only thing that kept Selina from exclaiming aloud Professor Tyron, you're dumber than the guy who churned the butter! "What did you find?"

"It looks like X.A.N.A. tried to destroy a security update applied by Tyron on his Supercomputer"

"And why would X.A.N.A. be annoyed by that?"

"Because that upgrade is a top-notch firewall that isolates Cortex from the network and prevents X.A.N.A. from launching attacks from Lyoko" Selina replied, unable to contain herself any longer.

"Like when Yumi and Ulrich's specters failed to materialize?" Aelita inquired, finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Exactly" Jeremy replied, analyzing the data from the Cortex security update. "Because of that firewall, X.A.N.A. has been unable to maintain an activated tower"

"Wait a minute" After he had returned from Cortex and therefore the adrenaline rush that kept him alert and able to stand on his legs had worn off, sleep deprivation had once again made William feel on the verge of fainting. However, he could still pick up that there was something that didn't add up. "Tyron installed a firewall on Cortex and then his Ninjas attacked the X.A.N.A. monsters as if they were intruders they had never seen before in their lives. Has he always been acting on his own, as if X.A.N.A. did not exist?"

"Maybe for him, X.A.N.A. just doesn't exist" Aelita replied, beginning to understand what was going on.

"I don't get it, they're on the same side, right?"

"When it comes to screwing us, certainly" Selina replied, with that bluntness she wore almost like a personal perfume. "But if they were allies, they would be sharing resources, like having the monsters and the Ninjas attack us at the same time. Or since Tyron sold out Franz Hopper and was like crazy to have access to Lyoko's powers, X.A.N.A. could have taught his host tricks to get the most out of Cortex, since the towers in that virtual world can be used to control electronic devices with the same quality as Lyoko's towers" Jeremy nodded, understanding what his friend was referring to. On a functional level Cortex was identical to Lyoko. "But it seems to me that Tyron didn't bother to isolate Cortex from the network, which allowed X.A.N.A. despite being very weakened, to parasitize Cortex without problems, and when Tyron put up the firewall, X.A.N.A. decided it was better to risk his host becoming aware of his presence rather than lose the ability to launch attacks from Lyoko"

"In that case we should warn Tyron" Aelita said very seriously. Yumi looked at her as if she had gone crazy.

"Warn him?"

"Tyron should be able to understand the danger caused by an AI getting out of control" The pinkette replied, trying to contain her nervousness. Even though Tyron made her hair stand on end, she knew that if they said nothing there was a good chance that when X.A.N.A. became strong enough to be able to dispense with Cortex, he would look at Tyron and say Well, I don't need you for anything anymore and reduce him to a grease stain on the wall.

"Aelita is right. We should try it at least" Jeremy sentenced. He didn't found in the least bit funny communicating with a mad scientist who had even made Aelita and her father flee to Lyoko to save their lives, but they had no choice.

"You've got to be kidding me" Odd muttered. That was getting more and more surreal. "Are you really going to send Tyron a gooey little note?"

"Just a meeting request" Replied Jeremy as he wrote an email asking Tyron to speak to him via webcam. "Let's wait for a reply"

After sending the message, Jeremy materialized Aelita, Yumi, Ulrich and Selina back on Earth. He felt as if he had handed the teacher a test for which he had not studied at all. And just as at the end of the test, there was only one thing left to say: Alea iacta est. The die is cast.

Selina tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall back to sleep. One of those nightmares that felt like premonitions had struck her again and sent her back to the real world with a first-rate adrenaline rush. She was watching the snow fall, trying to decide whether it was worth it to go back to sleep until the alarm clock went off an hour later, or, while she was awake, to start finding out what Anthea Hopper looked like after being imprisoned for twelve years in Switzerland.

Just as she had decided to open the computer and start using the Photoshop program on a photo of Anthea that Aelita had passed to her, her cell phone started ringing. Selina, startled, tried to reach over to the bedside table to grab the phone, but her feet got tangled in the folds of the sheets she had pushed aside and she fell flat on her face. With sore hands from breaking her fall, the girl picked up her cell phone, which continued to ring incessantly.

"Yes?"

"Selina, Tyron has replied" On the other end of the line, Jeremy sounded like he'd downed six cups of coffee in one sitting. "Let's go to the lab. Tell the others"

Selina, with the last remnants of drowsiness gone, nodded and hung up. As she began dialing Aelita's number, she couldn't help but think how odd it was that Tyron would call at a time so far outside of his work schedule. Although if what she suspected was true, it was no wonder Tyron wanted to keep his extracurricular activities as far away from work as possible. In any case, the time to stand up to him had come.

"Me, not diplomatic?" Odd exclaimed, with indignation as pungent as the scent of the sewers through which he walked. "I'm better than William!"

Although the trek through the sewers to get to the factory was so foul-smelling that it had rendered Selina practically insensitive to less strong stenches such as the ammonia used in Mrs. Hertz's laboratory practices, she was at these moments very grateful to be walking through a dry, warm place, even if the air freshener left much to be desired. Outside the temperature was -2ºC, and the wind chill was much colder because of the snow and sleet that turned anyone who dared to go outside into a human icicle. That's why a walk through the sewers seemed like heaven to Selina. Plus, if the heat produced by the incandescent bulbs illuminating the tunnel wasn't enough, she also had Odd and Jeremy's discussions about his fitness to be worthy of going to Cortex to warn Tyron of the danger he was in to heat up the atmosphere even more.

"I never get angry" William's voice brought her out of her thoughts. "Except when Ulrich bothers me"

"You're the one bothering me right now" He replied, pissed off. With the cold creeping into his body and only seven hours of sleep, Ulrich was in no mood to put up with William's taunts.

"Stop it!" Jeremy burst out, fed up with watching his friends bicker like elementary school children. "I said that only Aelita, Yumi and Selina will go to the Cortex!"

"I'd like to see Tyron too" Odd insisted. Even as creeped out by that mad scientist, the conversation they were about to have about a psychotic artificial intelligence stowing away in his Supercomputer was too interesting not to be there live and direct. "Okay, we may not be diplomatic, but we could just go and keep quiet"

"You couldn't do it" Jeremy replied, not believing a word his friend was saying. Odd was a master of the art of getting by, but subtlety was not his thing.

"But isn't it dangerous to let them go alone?" Although Ulrich was also looking forward to going to Cortex, he knew that Tyron was as easy to handle as plutonium in a nuclear reactor, and if one of her friends said the wrong words, the situation could turn into a powder keg in a blink of an eye.

"I'll devirtualize them in case anything goes wrong" Jeremy assured him. "I'm also going to materialize Bo's staff to Yumi, in case the Ninjas attack by surprise, alright?"

"But I..." Odd burning the last cartridge of hope made Selina think of a kid who wanted to get a taste of the goodies reserved for other people.

"Odd!" Jeremy's yell made it very clear to him that there was nothing more to talk about.

Jeremy was fed up with his insistence. Dealing with X.A.N.A. was dangerous enough, but explaining to Tyron about the surprise tenant he had in Cortex was like having a huge tanker truck in front of a hospital, and to find out if the truck had a cure for cancer or 20,000 gallons of nitroglycerin, Jeremy having no choice but to shoot it with a AK-47. And the last thing they needed was for Odd's impulsiveness to turn the surprise of said tanker into a pile of explosives.

The elevator doors opened and Aelita, Selina and Yumi rushed into the scanner room. It was so early outside that even the birds were still sleeping. In the lab, Jeremy started the virtualization protocol.

"Transfer: Aelita. Transfer: Selina. Transfer: Yumi"

As the scanner doors closed Selina couldn't help but think of the look on Professor Tyron's face when he learned that his spying on Franz Hopper at the moment of truth had been of no use to him. In the lab, Jeremy was putting the finishing touches on the virtualization protocol.

"Transfer: Aelita. Transfer: Selina. Transfer: Yumi. Virtualization!"

It seemed unbelievable that just twelve hours earlier, a three-way battle was raging between the Lyoko Warriors, the X.A.N.A. monsters and the Ninjas. But as they approached the core interface, Selina could almost believe that the Cortex core was a haven of peace and tranquility. But Yumi didn't believe that by any stretch of the imagination. The Japanese girl had pulled out her fans, ready to launch them at the first sign of alarm. Aelita cautiously approached the core interface, inserting the digital key that would allow her to initiate a sort of Skype call with Cortex's creator.

Fortunately, they did not have to wait long. The screen in front of the interface lit up and Tyron's face appeared, who looked at the newcomers as if they were something that had stuck in his shoe.

"So tell me, you little avatars, what's this essential news I need to learn?" Selina scanned Tyron's face intently, trying to figure out if the indifference and curiosity he was showing was genuine or just a bluff. "Do you even know who I am?"

Yes, an asshole and a traitor who is not even good enough to spy on what the neighbor across the street is doing, thought Selina, disgusted by his arrogance. Next to her, Aelita was also a little annoyed, but she tried not to let it show.

"We perfectly do, Tyron"

"Professor Tyron" Corrected the man, frowning as he watched the avatar with the red-haired braid roll her eyes, as if to say Is that all? Are you sure you haven't forgotten anything else?

Aelita, although she felt that this was not the time to insist on etiquette when addressing people, ignored Tyron's haughty tone and cut to the chase.

"Professor Tyron, do you know about X.A.N.A.?"

"X.A.N.A.?" The man repeated, puzzled. "Never heard of it" Unconsciously, Tyron went back to the last days he had shared with his old research partner Franz Hopper. That virtual world, Lyoko, had so much potential. It was a pity that his idiot of a partner decided to use it for experiments as if he were a child instead of opening his eyes and realizing that this technology was worth a fortune. He blinked and then turned his attention back to those nagging flies that looked like video game avatars. "What is it? A video game?"

"X.A.N.A. is definitely not a game" Aelita replied, very serious. "He's an artifcial intelligence that is trying to take control over the network"

"In your message you said it was related to my Supercomputer" Replied Tyron, who apparently still didn't understand what it was all about. Selina looked at him shocked. He may have been a genius in quantum physics, but when it came to taking hints he was slower than a snail with a gimp.

"Indeed" In those moments Aelita felt like a teacher asking the lesson to a child who had fallen asleep in class. "X.A.N.A. lies in your Supercomputer"

When Tyron heard that, he laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair.

"If it was true, then I would know it" He replied, chuckling. What those video game avatars were saying was a great joke.

"Professor Tyron" Until that moment Selina had kept quiet and had left Aelita to speak, since although the redhead knew how to explain very well concepts that to many seemed incomprehensible, the problem was that under pressure she had the same subtlety as that of a brick in the face. But the string of stupid things that had come out of the mouth of that little man with saffron curls had made Selina unable to bite her tongue any longer. "Do you really think it's perfectly normal for some sort of mechanical monsters to have appeared in the core of your virtual world, and have been beating the crap out of your agents to gain access to the core's interface? I can understand that your virtual world over time has had some minor alterations, since until recently you didn't install the firewall that isolated it properly from the network, causing it to have some oscillations, but I don't believe that you think that what happened this afternoon was normal. Don't you think you should run a virus or unknown program scan on Cortex to make sure everything is in order?"

Tyron smiled internally at the girl's concern. Yes, it was true that he had encountered some disturbance before, but these had resolved themselves. Besides those pesky avatars, there was no one who knew of Cortex's existence, and the only ones who might have suspected it, such as Franz Hopper, were long dead.

"Kid, I'm the one in control of everything"

"No, you're not" Selina replied, glaring at him. Despite the youthfulness that betrayed her face, her eyes were as hard as sapphires. "Your firewall is so good that X.A.N.A. preferred to alert you to his presence rather than see his power diminished. On that I have to commend you. The problem is that if you close your eyes to what is happening, if we don't collaborate in thoroughly disinfecting Cortex, X.A.N.A. is going to control the entire network, and when he does, he will no longer need you for anything and will tear you to shreds"

"Tyron fears no one, not even this that is X.A.N.A. supposedly hidden in my Supercomputer!" The man shouted, furious. In spite of the danger she was in, Selina could not help but laugh at Tyron's temper tantrum. "Do you want the proof?"

Tyron snapped his fingers and instantly three Ninjas emerged from the platform the girls were on. Yumi immediately pulled out her Bo staff, at the same time Aelita prepared to launch energy fields and Selina unsheathed her blades. However, all the weapons in the world could not have helped them face what awaited them. The Ninjas shot Aelita, Selina and Yumi a beam of greenish energy with an effect equal to that of a taser, leaving them completely paralyzed. They then lifted them into the air.

"Jeremy, they're trying to imprison us inside the virtual world!" Aelita shouted, increasingly frightened.

Despite not being able to move even a muscle, Selina's heart was pounding wildly against her chest. That energy that had invaded her the night of the accident was nothing more than a spark in contrast to the electricity that was coursing through her veins. Like her, that energy hated being caged, flailing like a wild beast against the energy field Tyron had created. Although Tyron's energy field kept Aelita and Yumi firmly caged, in Selina's case it would occasionally give way to an deep purple hue. Rage made her body burn. She wanted to beat Tyron until her knuckles bled. She wanted to break that arrogance he had built on the wreckage of stolen lives.

"I'll bring you back!" Amidst the electricity that tinged her vision purple, Selina could hear Jeremy's frightened voice in the distance.

Now the glow that enveloped Selina was much more purple than green. A subtle tremor ran through Cortex's core, like an earthquake warning that a volcano was about to erupt. The Ninja who had paralyzed Selina was beginning to panic, but increased the power of the energy field, hoping to keep the little shrew under control.

However, he did not have time to check whether that would be enough. Before they could paralyze them for good, Aelita, Selina and Yumi were devirtualized. But just as Selina disappeared in a pile of pixels, a flash of energy momentarily turned Cortex's core purple. Then everything went silent.

From the comfort of his laboratory, Tyron surveyed the scene with a smug grin. Those brats may have slipped away, but at least they had learned their lesson.

"I'm the one in control, mini-avatars" The man hissed, contemplating the Cortex core now devoid of intruders.

But that purple glow that had illuminated Cortex's core when Selina had been devirtualized was not the last throes of the beast, but a ticking time bomb that had triggered its countdown. The walls began to shake, and before Tyron could react, several obelisks shot out, devirtualizing the Ninjas on the spot.

Tyron nearly fell out of his chair in shock, unable to believe his eyes. What the hell had just happened?

"This is crazy! That guy may be a genius in quantum physics, but he doesn't realize what's right under his nose!" Yumi exclaimed, once she, Aelita and Selina were back in the lab. Their friends seemed rather off-color, not so much from the fact that it had been quite some time since they had gotten up without putting anything in their mouths as from the fact that Tyron had violently refused to see the red flags that were on Cortex.

"A genius?" Repeated Odd, incredulous. His friend Jeremy was indeed a genius, but Tyron was worthy of a far less flattering adjective. "You mean a nutcase! Just let me go and explain him the way things are"

"There's nothing to do" Aelita replied, placing a gentle hand on Odd's shoulder. "He doesn't realize he's giving X.A.N.A. full access to the network"

"Actually I think he may be helpful" Jeremy commented. It was the first time he had opened his mouth since Aelita, Selina and Yumi had returned from Cortex. "His security update disrupted X.A.N.A., right?"

"Yes, but judging by the way X.A.N.A. sent the Seventh Cavalry to the Cortex core, I doubt that upgrade will last long" Ulrich replied, not quite understanding what his friend was getting at.

"I don't dispute that" Replied the blond with a small smile. Hopefully that security update would last long enough for them to have an uneventful Christmas holidays. "The thing is I found in Tyron's firewall some very interesting lines of code"

"By interesting you mean they could help us design a virus against X.A.N.A.?" Aelita inquired, a smile spreading across her face. The sun was finally coming out after the storm.

"Exactly"

"Einstein, you're a real genius!" Odd exclaimed, giving his friend a bear hug.

"As long as I'm not a nutcase I'm fine with it" Jeremy replied, making his friends burst out laughing.

It seemed unbelievable that photo editing was such a complicated job, but in those moments Selina felt as if her eyes were about to become independent of her face. She had been using the GIMP Image Editor for a couple of hours, desaturating Anthea Hopper's hair until it was the color of rusty iron; bleaching, desaturating and adding roughness to the pixels that corresponded to the woman's face to mimic the effect of pale, dry skin; lightly tinting red and then adding a hint of roughness to the corners of her lips to make Anthea's lips look chapped; and finally using a magic potion of adding a red-purple hue, cloning and blurring to create the illusion of puffy eyes. Now Selina had a pretty good idea of what Anthea looked like after being locked up for twelve years in Switzerland, but another thing she was pretty clear about was how Victorian era seamstresses felt after spending hours and hours sewing by candlelight. Her head ached as if she had a massive hangover, and she was so exhausted and hungry that she doubted she could wait another half hour before dinner was served in the cafeteria.

But at least I might be able to find a match if I run this through the French police databases. Selina thought, staring at Anthea Hopper's prematurely aged face.

Almost tripping over her own feet, Selina got up from her chair to go to the bedside table where she kept her stash of Lindt chocolates, to see if one of those creamy dark chocolate bars would give her enough sugar and caffeine to keep her from falling asleep on her own plate when it was dinnertime. Her fingers trembled as she unwrapped the chocolate bar. Normally she took her time savoring the chocolate, but she was so hungry that the chocolate bar disappeared from her hands in a couple of bites. She closed her eyes, stopping for a few moments to process information and giving her mind a well-deserved rest. But before Selina could figure out whether the chocolate bar would eliminate her fatigue or the sugar rush would cause her to go out like a light, she heard a knock at her door.

Surprised, Selina opened the door and met the hazel green eyes of Aelita, who was holding what looked like a huge file.

"Aelita, what are you doing here?" Looking down she realized that her clothes were soaked. "And why are you soaking wet?"

Selina took her friend by the arm and had her lean against the lit radiator, which Aelita appreciated, as she was freezing cold. Then she pulled her hairdryer out of the closet.

"Cover your ears if you mind the hairdryer, but I don't want you walking around in wet clothes" Selina muttered, plugging in the hairdryer. "Outside it's cold enough to freeze even heartburn"

After thoroughly drying Aelita's clothes, Selina put the dryer away and sat down next to her, her charcoal-black jeans pressed against her friend's faded blue pants.

"Well, what happened? You look worried"

"After school I went to the Hermitage to see if I could find anything of my mother's" Aelita opened what Selina at first thought was a huge file and was actually a photo album. "My father had in his room an album of photos from when he and my mother were sweethearts, and although they are dated, I have no idea where they were taken. Could you please help me?"

Selina almost let out a sigh of relief. After having spent several hours in front of the computer screen almost hand-crafted editing a photo of her friend's mother, going through some paper photographs felt almost like a walk in the park. With a smile, she nodded and began to analyze the photographs.

"Well, for starters the architecture of the places where the photos were taken is Nordic to a fault. The houses are all brightly colored, with gabled roofs to make the snow slide off and there are a good handful of wooden buildings" Selina muttered, trying to get the gist of the photos. It was hard for her to ignore that Anthea so young and full of life, with hair the color of fire bouncing over her shoulders next to a Franz Hopper happier and more carefree than she could have imagined, wearing a blazer with shoulder pads and displaying thick hair the color of slate. Still, Selina kept her attention fixed on the stage where her friend's parents were standing. The next photo showed them on a boardwalk, with the harbor in the background. "I'd say the photos were taken in Sweden, Finland or Denmark"

"And why not Iceland or Norway?"

"Iceland is an island of volcanic origin where only tundra grows, plus its capital, Reykjavik, has such modern architecture that it looks like the Nordic version of New York. And in the photos you can clearly see traditional Nordic architecture and the hills surrounding the city have a pretty decent boreal forest" Selina replied, dusting off her knowledge of geography. "And while Norway has some killer coniferous forests, its coastline is basically made up of cliffs, which is incompatible with that fantastic urban harbor you see in the photos" Her eyes lit up as she realized she had a very simple way to figure out the city in which the photos had been taken. "Could you pass me some photos showing the shop signs, please?"

Aelita turned a few pages of the album until she found a picture of her mother in a bakery. Anthea was enjoying a bite of what appeared to be a cream and raspberry cake, and her green eyes, identical to her daughter's, made one think of light through a forest. However, Selina noticed the letter on the table. It had some words written on it, but she couldn't make out its contents. Perhaps if she enlarged it a little...

"Aelita, do you know anyone who has a magnifying glass?" The redhead asked, squinting to see if she could make out the words on the letter, but the handwriting was too small to make out. "Menus from restaurants, cafes and bakeries always show the name of the establishment, but this is too small for me to see anything"

"Jeremy has one in his room. Wait a minute, I'm going to ask him for it"

Aelita ran out of her room and in a minute returned with a magnifying glass in her hand.

"Thank you, Aelita!" Selina exclaimed. If there was one thing she hated it was being on the verge of getting an answer and not having the means to get it. She picked up the magnifying glass and perused the menu shown in the photo. "I can make out the name Vete-Katten. I'm going to Google it and see what I come up with"

Selina bolted for her laptop and typed Vete-Katten into the search engine. Within seconds she could see that it was a bakery founded in the Stockholm of the Roaring Twenties. She grinned from ear to ear. Now she knew where Anthea was from.

"Aelita, your mother is from Stockholm!" She said excitedly. "Do you know how cool that is?"

"Well, I really don't know" Replied the pinkette, not understanding what her friend's sudden enthusiasm was all about. Granted, it was wonderful to know where her mother had been born, but Selina was taking it as if they had just won the lottery. "Does it by any chance have anything to do with where my mother might currently be?"

"Partly yes" Replied the girl. She sat down at the computer and took the Stockholm University database by storm, tracing Anthea Hopper's name in enrollments occurring between the years 1977 and 1987. Then she turned to her friend. "We know that your mother was a scientist who was a full collaborator in the Project Carthage, who was kidnapped in 1990 and was in Switzerland for twelve years until she escaped in 2002. Your father, when he defected from the Proyect Carthage, kept a low profile working as a Physics teacher at the Kadic Academy. What I want to find out is what career your mother studied, because after escaping she needed a job, and that job has to be well paid, since living hand to mouth you can't afford a good hairdresser and a proper diet" Aelita nodded, knowing what her friend was referring to. That specter of Anthea had an almost frightening realism to it. "So it would make the most sense for that job to be a normal one, related to the world of teaching at the high school or college level, but a viable job option of her college career"

Aelita couldn't help but smile. That was one of the things she liked most about her friend: turning the impossible into something so simple and small that you could put it in your pocket like a candy.

The beeping of Selina's laptop brought her out of her musings. The girl rushed over and opened the notification. and smiled as her suspicions were confirmed. She was one step closer to getting what she was looking for.

"Your mom finished her master's degree in Quantum Physics in the summer of 1984" Selina said, reading Anthea Hopper's diploma. She then went on to Google the career outlets for that master's degree. "With a master's degree in quantum physics the jobs your mom could get would be research assistant, data analyst, technology consultant, Physics teacher, quantum computing software developer, lab technician, or cybersecurity specialist"

"Mom would really like to be a quantum physics teacher or research assistant" Aelita commented, with a small smile. But a memory made her turn pale.

"Aelita, what's wrong with you?"

The girl didn't answer, in her mind forming an idea that chilled her to the bone. The specter of her mom that had tried to attack her in early November was incredibly realistic, because X.A.N.A. knew her mother was out there somewhere. The closest source of information available to X.A.N.A. was Cortex. Cortex's creator had built a particle accelerator, which required a very high knowledge of quantum physics. And her mom mother had a master's degree in quantum physics and after escaping, she was looking for a job that would be a professional outlet for her college degree. All those puzzle pieces could be put together in a jiffy, and the picture they gave could not have been more frightening.

"Mom, how could you be such a fool?" Aelita whispered at last, her green eyes lost in the void.

In the midst of the horror that made her body tremble, she almost didn't notice Selina's pressure on her hand, anchoring her in the real world. The redhead hugged her tightly, running her fingers through her friend's short bubblegum pink locks.

"Your mom is no fool" Selina told her softly, her blue eyes as limpid and warm as a lake on a summer day. "She was a frightened woman who had lost all her family. She was looking for security and a sense of belonging. And there was no better security than her husband's lifelong friend, who knew about her knowledge of quantum physics and was willing to offer her a job at his research center. During the twelve years that Anthea had been a prisoner, her husband's best friend could not have changed that much. And she was right: Tyron didn't change, he simply showed who he really was"

"Do you think my mother simply gave up all hope and went back to Switzerland or was she searching for my father and me at the risk of whoever kidnapped her finding her again?" Aelita asked, feeling a heavy weight on her heart.

"That's what we're going to find out" Selina replied, opening the French police database and entering Anthea Hopper's altered photo next to her name, focusing her search on the year 2002. "I'm sure that as soon as she escaped from Switzerland, your mother's first priority was to find out what had become of you, and I think the police would put on record a woman claiming to be the wife of a man who disappeared years ago with an underage girl who is their daughter and who is asking for them"

Even though the heating in the room was on full blast, Aelita felt the cold seeping into her bones. Selina slipped an arm around her shoulders, her fiery hair brushing against her friend's collarbone, like a bonfire trying to melt the icy poison of a cruel truth that threatened to damage her heart. As they waited for a match to appear in the French police database, Aelita couldn't help but ask her what had been on her mind for some time.

"Do you ever get tired?" Aelita asked, as the streetlights of the Kadic academy flickered on and gave the room a golden glow.

"What do you mean?"

"If you've ever considered giving up figuring out who you are, how your powers work, who your birth parents are, what your connection is to X.A.N.A. Knowing your place in the world"

The girl smiled slightly. It was a tired smile, but not a defeated one.

"Every once in a while I stop to rest" Selina replied, looking down at her sketchbook, which was next to her laptop. "Every once in a while I pull out my snack based on my passion for drawing and music, take a bite and think What do I have to do now? What are my priorities and what resources do I have at my disposal? Before, the break was to find out what the hell was happening to me. Then it was to find out who my biological parents are. And now it's figuring out what happened to your mother and who Professor Tyron really is. Regarding my birth parents I haven't had the time to look for clues yet, but with your mother I've found a whole untapped mine. I focus on what I can realistically achieve, either with a little effort or a lot of hard work, and I congratulate myself when I get a small victory. And if I lose, I try to figure out what the problem is and what I have to do to get around it next time. That way I never get tired"

Something warm and comforting spread through Aelita's chest, like drinking hot chocolate. The beeping of Selina's laptop brought her back to the real world. The redhead picked up her laptop and showed the screen to her friend, with a sad but proud smile.

"Your mom never got tired of looking for you" Selina said, looking at Anthea Hopper's police statement from June 6, 2002, just three years after Franz and Aelita fled to Lyoko; plus several meetings in the years since with the inspector who had handled the case of Franz Hopper and his daughter's disappearance. Aelita's eyes filled with tears. "She never gave up. Now it's our turn to warn her that she's working alongside the man who destroyed her family. Anthea has to know that her husband's old friend is a traitor and possibly a murderer"