Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

ECHOES OF ECHOES:
Finding William Dunbar

PART I: ALL WE'VE GOT
CHAPTER I: JEREMIE

“Mr. Belpois, do you know where you are?”

The young man looked around. It was a nondescript room, dimly lit, with no one in it but him. The walls might have been a shade of green, or that could have just been the light that the single fluorescent bulb cast out. There was a mirrored window in front of him, like something out of a crime show. A lanky, unkempt face – his own – looked back at him. He certainly had not been this unshaven the last time he saw his reflection, so he was either very far away or he had been asleep for a very long time. There was no door that he could see, and when he attempted to turn to see if there was one behind him, he discovered he was chained to the chair.

“No,” Jeremie admitted.

“Can you tell me what day it is?” The voice that he heard was not intimidating. It was a light voice, moderately high-pitched, with a hint of croaking tones underneath it. Likely a male, probably over fifty. The voice did not scare him, nor did the situation he found himself in, truthfully. It was actually rather interesting. “Mr. Belpois?”

“July 25^th, 2018,” Jeremie answered. It was a guess. It had been July 20^th the last he remembered, but the stubble on his jaw was at least five days' worth.

“You guessed,” the voice responded simply. “But you are correct.”

“Are you going to tell me the answer to your first question?” Jeremie asked.

“I am asking the questions, for now,” the voice responded. How predictable. “However, to answer some questions presumptively, no, you are not under arrest, and you are not being charged with a crime. You will be free to go as soon as you answer a few more questions for us.”

Jeremie's hands chafed at the restraints on his wrists. “Well I'm certainly not in a position to argue,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Tell me everything you know about Project Carthage,” the voice said.

Again, how predictable.

“I imagine I know quite a bit less than you do,” Jeremie found himself responding. In the mirror, he could see his eyebrow arch. He hadn't intended it to.

“That isn't what I asked,” the voice responded. He was not angry, or even impatient. In fact, he almost sounded amused. Almost.

“Project Carthage was a military program intended to intercept enemy communications,” he recited, almost by rote. “I'm not certain on the time scale. Or even, really, which enemy they meant. I presume the Russians, some time around the Cold War, but I'm not familiar with the specifics of the project itself. Only with… the remnants. I think you already know this.”

“How did you become familiar with Project Carthage?”

“Oh, I just sort of stumbled into it,” Jeremie said. He was almost successful in shrugging as he said it. “The same way any twelve year old becomes familiar with the discarded remnants of unconstitutional government projects. I was snooping around in places I shouldn't have been. I was interested in robotics and I figured the old abandoned factory would be a prime place to find components. I wasn't wrong. I just happened to find other things along with them.”

The voice was silent for a few moments. “Let me… ask something more specific,” he said. He was less amused now, perhaps bordering on impatient. “How did you know what what you found on Île Seguin was Project Carthage?”

Jeremie had to take a moment to compose his thoughts. It had been a while, after all. Fourteen years, in fact. “I found the diaries of Franz Hopper,” he finally replied. “He had built the-”

“How?” The voice was sharp now. No, not sharp. Just… eager. Excited, even. “How did you find them?” For the first time, Jeremie got the sense that the voice didn't know the answer to the question he asked. Jeremie was surprised. Certainly if he knew everything else, he knew about Aelita. But if he didn't, Jeremie didn't want him to know.

“What happens if I don't answer that question?”

“Then you sit here and rot.” The voice was harsh now, an angry wheeze. He could hear the hot rush of the speaker's breath come across the speakers in a tinny echo.

“They were in a locker at a metro station. I don't remember which one,” Jeremie finally said. “Mr. Puck gave me the key.”

“Mr… who is Mr. Puck?”

“An elf,” Jeremie said plainly.

A sigh buzzed through the speakers. “I do not understand why you feel the need to be so coy,” the voice said. “I have been nothing but generous with you.”

“You… kept me unconscious for five days,” Jeremie said. “I don't even know how you rendered me unconscious. I don't really remember what I was doing before I was here, so probably drugs...” Jeremie stopped as a thought occurred to him. “You aren't even with the government, are you? You're… you're one of the people. One of the ones who worked on Project Carthage. And you want to know what Franz Hopper did with your work. You want to get back to it. Well you can't. It's gone, and not even I can get it ba-”

“Shut up!” The voice was hissing now. “It has to do with the girl, doesn't it! The daughter! You're protecting the daughter!”

“It's been over twenty years! What do you hope to accomplish? What do you want?” Jeremie was screaming now, trying to stand up to pull himself out of his restraints. There was a thumping, a deep ominous thumping from somewhere just beyond his perception. The glass began to shake. A crack appeared in the window, fracturing his reflection. He pulled and pulled, trying to break free, as static hissed over the speakers. The window cracked and cracked again and then shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. A wolf broke through, snarling, spit flying from its teeth into the air, mixing with the glass. It looked like glitter, everywhere, as the wolf lunged at Jeremie and snapped at his face.

Aelita awoke in a start.

The clock on the table next to her told her that it was 3:07 in the morning. The red numerals were the only light in the room, aside from what little moonlight made it through the blinds. There was someone in the bed next to her, sleeping soundly. She listened to their breath for a few moments, in and out, in and out, until her own breath slowed.

She touched her face. There was no stubble, nor any bite marks. In the dark, she fumbled for the phone. It was July 14^th, 2018. Yesterday had been Friday the thirteenth, and she clearly remembered having gotten home from work, making dinner, playing a little while on the piano, making some tea, and going to bed early. It was Jeremie who was next to her, just as he had been every night for the last four years. He probably hadn't gotten home that long ago, since he tended to work late. As such, he was sleeping like a rock. Even if she had screamed, and she wasn't sure she had, he wouldn't have moved. She placed a hand softly on his shoulder, just to feel the warmth. He was sticky, and so was she, she realized. It was summer in London, an unusually sweltering and unforgiving summer this year. She suddenly wanted to take a shower, but for a moment, she remembered once seeing a wolf in the shower as well. She shook the thought from her head. The wolf dreams no longer had any teeth.

But then, it had been a very long time since the last wolf dream. Twelve years, in fact. She got up and took a shower anyway. It was cold, it made her chest shudder, and it felt good.

When she got back to the bedroom, a towel loosely wrapped around her waist, Jeremie was sitting up on the bed with his glasses on. He was clean-shaven, which somehow made her feel relieved. “Oh, I'm sorry if I woke you,” she said softly.

Jeremie stared at her for a moment. A hint of a smile played at his lips, but then he spoke and his voice was solemn. “Are you alright?”

She sat down at the edge of the bed and looked at him. He was concerned, and that was sweet. To tell the truth, some strange part of her always enjoyed making Jeremie concerned. It made him pay attention. “I just had a bad dream,” she said softly. “It's alright.”

“It's this damn heat,” Jeremie said. “If we had wanted it to be this warm we would have moved to Rome.”

“You were the one who insisted on London,” she reminded him. “Perhaps we should have gone to Rome instead, the same weather but at least I speak the language better there.” She feigned annoyance in her voice but she was smiling as she said it. She didn't mind London at all.

“What was the dream about?” Jeremie's brow was still furrowed.

“Well… I was you. And I was tied up...”

Jeremie raised an eyebrow. “And this was a nightmare?”

Aelita laughed. “My wrists… your wrists were tied to a chair, but it was an interrogation. It was in a room like in the crime shows, with the mirrored window. There was a voice speaking over a speaker, asking about Project Carthage.” She trailed off and thought for a moment, wondering if it was worth it to mention all the details. It would probably just stress him out, but he would be able to tell if she was lying. “He was pressing for details about how you had found out about Project Carthage, but you didn't want to mention me, so he got angry and… turned into a wolf, I guess? And then I woke up.”

“A wolf?” Even in the dim light she could tell Jeremie had gotten paler. “Like… like...”

“Yes, Jeremie,” she said with a sigh. “Like… before.”

Jeremie leaned forward and crawled over to her, his eyes wide. “Aelita… this...”

“Oh, it was just a dream, Jeremie.” She turned away, genuinely annoyed this time. She shrugged away from his hand as she felt him about to touch her shoulder.

“It was never just a dream,” he whispered.

Anger ballooned in her chest and she stood up suddenly, clenching her fists. It was this time, she wanted to say. But she couldn't. Instead she just began to cry. “Please,” she found herself saying.

Jeremie did not get up to hold her, though she could tell that he wanted to. “I… I'm sorry. That was stupid to say.” His voice was small. Hearing it just made her angrier, and more scared.

“Oh, god damn it, I… it's been twelve fucking years, can't it be fucking over?” She let her knees give way and crashed back onto the bed. Jeremie still did not touch her. “Can we never escape?”

“Is… there anything else I should know about the dream?” Jeremie's voice was still small, and she still couldn't stand to hear it.

“It was… in the future. July 25^th, I remember distinctly. But whoever it was had captured you on the 20^th and woke you up on the 25^th,” she said. She could remember Jeremie's voice saying the date. It gave her goosebumps.

“That's next Friday,” Jeremie whispered to himself. “What about the voice? Did it sound familiar?”

In spite of herself, she thought about it. It had sounded familiar. “It was…” It was a voice she had heard before, she could feel it. But not in a long time, someone at the foggy beginnings of her memory. It was someone who spoke a lot, and she felt like she had trusted whoever it was, as if they were a benevolent authority. Not her father, but someone similar.Someone at Kadic? Jim? No, it wasn't gruff enough. But thinking of Jim made the answer hit her like a ton of bricks, even though saying it aloud just made her more confused. “It was Mr. Delmas?”

She finally turned around to face Jeremie, whose eyebrows had about flown off his forehead. “Oh Jeremie, it had to have been just a dream.”

“Yes,” Jeremie said with a nod. “But… I think tomorrow I'm going to get in touch with Sissi anyway.”

Somehow Aelita could not find it within herself to tell Jeremie not to.

–-

It was not the fact that Sissi Delmas had ended their conversation with “I'll be right there” and showed up at his doorstep within hours of calling that surprised Jeremie the most. It was not that she informed him within minutes that she was in medical school. It was not even that she said she had lunch with Yumi on a semi-regular basis. No, what surprised Jeremie the most was that Sissi Delmas told him that she preferred to be called Elisabeth.

“I just don't think Sissi is a doctor's name,” she said with a wrinkled face. “Oh, don't look so aghast. Middle school was a long time ago! People change, Einstein.” At the last word, she grinned. “Anyway, I've been talking nonstop! Let's go get some coffee or something.”

It was eight in the evening on a Saturday. The only place in London that was serving anything besides beer was Starbucks. Jeremie ordered a cafe au lait – or rather as Starbucks insisted he call it, a “Misto,” and Elisabeth, to Jeremie's surprise, ordered a black coffee. She had struck him as someone who liked her coffee overly sweet, but he decided not to say anything. They sat down at a table in the corner; outside the night was black and the street was full of throngs of people making their way to and from various pubs. The sounds of their migration – distant laughs, scuffs and stumbles on the concrete, and even faint singing – could barely be made out even over the quiet murmur of the few people in the coffee shop. There was something about the room, however corporate it might have been, that quelled the chaos of the outside world.

“I had you pegged as a tea kind of guy,” said Elisabeth with another grin.

“Nope,” Jeremie said. “Coffee is what keeps me functioning. Always has.” He laughed. “You remember how sleepless I was in middle school.”

“It has been a very long time, Jeremie Belpois. I hardly recognize you. You're so tall. Even your face is different. Such a strong jaw.” She giggled. “Good thing Aelita isn't here. I just mean to say that you've grown up so much. We all have, I suppose. But what made you move all this way?”

“Oh, Aelita and I… just wanted a change of scenery, I suppose.” Jeremie laughed. That was putting it lightly. “We've been here for four years now.”

“What is it that you do? Don't tell me. You work with computers.”

Jeremie could do nothing but nod. “You got me. I'm a programmer at the London Stock Exchange. It's all pretty fast-paced stuff, it keeps me busy.” His supervisors generally discouraged getting into specifics with what he did; he hoped Elisabeth didn't press any farther.

“Does Aelita work with you? That would be cute!”

He chuckled. “No, she's actually a sound engineer. She works at a recording studio, and she actually makes a little music herself. Speaking of jobs, I… have to admit, I was surprised when you told me you were in medical school.”

Elisabeth threw her head back and laughed. The entire coffee shop turned to look at her, as did several people outside. She paid no attention. “Of course it does,” she said between gasps for breath. “It surprises everyone. I ran into… who was it? Someone from Kadic… oh, it's on the tip of my tongue… it was Milly Solovieff, remember her? She was at my hospital for an appointment and she saw me in my scrubs and about fell over, she was so surprised. Her jaw literally dropped, and I laughed just like this, I just think it's hilarious how people react when they see me. 'Sissi Delmas, the airhead, a doctor?' You better believe it!” She took a deep drink of coffee to calm herself, and then continued on.

“I went through so many ideas of what I wanted to do… a dancer, a fashion designer, a model… but it was my mother who casually said one day that I could be a surgeon, the way I was so nimble with my hands when I sewed. It kinda stuck with me. So I looked into it, I tried it, and here we are.” She held her hands out wide. “I'm going for gynecology and obstetrics, I've got about two years to go still. But they all love my in my department. So much that they let me out of a shift to go visit an old friend!”

“Sounds like things are going good, then?” Jeremie felt himself smile, and it was an earnest one. Thinking back to middle school, Sissi had been one of those people who was really only happy on the outside. He couldn't remember a time he heard her laugh the way she just had.

Elisabeth nodded. “I'm enjoying things. I feel… successful. It's a good feeling. Oh, and Yumi says hello! But I'm sure she'll be miffed to find out you reached out to me of all people before calling her.” She playfully swatted Jeremie on the arm, smiling all the way. “Why wasn't Aelita able to come out with us? Is she still working?”

“Yeah, one of her clients likes to record at night, he says his 'art' is better at night or something,” Jeremie said. “She and I tend to work odd hours. I'll get called into work at all hours to work on some project, and since she has a lot of high-profile people who need the studio at so many different times, it's actually a little hard to get a whole evening with each other anymore. But we're used to it.”

“You were always such a power couple,” Elisabeth said. “It's so incredible you've been together all this time. Soul mates.”

Jeremie felt his cheeks burning. “Yeah,” he said in a sigh he had not meant to make. “Say…,” Jeremie began, staring into his coffee. “How's your dad doing, by the way?” He hoped it had sounded casual.

There was silence. Elisabeth took a drink of coffee, then set the cup down on the table and still didn't say anything. Jeremie looked up, but she was looking out the window. “Oh… he's fine,” she finally said.

“I… I'm sorry if I-” Jeremie began, but Elisabeth raised a hand to cut him off.

“Listen, Jeremie, can I tell you something? I'm actually really glad you called when you did. I needed to get away for a bit. My father… he and I have always been pretty close. But recently, well… he left Kadic.”

It sounded strange for Elisabeth to end such a charged moment with just those words, but at the same time, it seemed almost unthinkable that Jean-Pierre Delmas would be anywhere but Kadic Academy. Or at least, it ought to have been unthinkable. Jeremie had been thinking of the dream the whole time. And it made his stomach feel like it was full of rocks to hear that Mr. Delmas was no longer working at Kadic primarily because it meant he could be working somewhere else. “Where… does he work now?”

“He won't tell me.” Elisabeth was frowning. “He always tells me everything, but he… he won't tell me where he's working. I guess he must work for the government, if he can't tell me, but… I just can't think of a government agency that would hire a sixty-eight year old middle school principal for anything that… well, important. It's not like they're doing classified work at the Ministry of Education.”

Jeremie felt like he wanted to die. Elisabeth kept going, ignorant to the relentless torture she was placing Jeremie through.

“So I called Jim and made him tell me what he knew. Jim can't say no to me. He didn't know much, but he said my dad is doing investigatory work into old, classified government files. He doesn't know why they wanted my dad either, but Jim did tell me that they tried to recruit him too. But Jim wouldn't leave Kadic.” Elisabeth sighed. “My dad won't talk to anybody now. My mother is worried sick, but I can't stand to go see her because she just stresses me out. I even went back to Kadic, to see if anyone else knew anything, but… all our old teachers are gone. They've all left within the past year, too. Even the gardener is gone. And remember Yolande, the nurse? She's at my hospital now, but she won't talk to me.”

Suddenly, Elisabeth reached out and grabbed Jeremie's hands. “Do you want to know what I think? I think something is going on. I think there's something about Kadic that we don't know.” She brought her voice down to a whisper. “I think… something paranormal. There are ghosts in Kadic. I know it.”

Jeremie blinked. If even for just a moment, his stomach felt lightened. He had to hold in laughter as he looked into Elisabeth's eyes. She had no idea how correct she was… or how terribly, terribly wrong.

She tightened her grip on Jeremie's hands and furrowed her brows. “I know how it sounds. Yumi made the same face you're making. But she wouldn't tell me to my face I was wrong. And you won't either, will you?” She leaned in close, almost nose-to-nose with Jeremie. “Do you want to know the real reason I came all this way so quickly? I think you know something too. You and Aelita and Yumi… you were always together, always disappearing places. And why is it that when you all came of age, you got as far away as possible? Ulrich went to Germany, Yumi told me. Odd Della Robbia is in New York City or something. No one has seen or heard from William Dunbar in years. Yumi left and only came back this year because her mother is sick. You both dove into college and then bolted to London as soon as you were done. Well I want to know what's going on. I want to know what you know.”

Jeremie and his friends had told Elisabeth Delmas the truth at least three times, if he recalled correctly. Not that she remembered, but still, what could once more hurt?

“Well, alright,” whispered Jeremie. “Can you keep a secret?”

--

Elisabeth stared at the ceiling, her head laid on the back of Jeremie's sofa. “I guess the ghost theory was pretty dumb, huh?”

“Well… I suppose, all things considered, it makes just about as much sense as the truth,” Jeremie said.

“So… this… XANA thing… it's gone, right?” Sissi turned her head to look at Jeremie and Aelita, who sat next to each other at the dining room table.

“Yes,” said Aelita. “This was all… long ago. 2006. We thought it was all done.” She had been there when Jeremie and Elisabeth came back. She had not smiled since she first greeted Elisabeth. In fact, at the moment, she looked rather sick.

“But you think my dad is somehow involved in trying to find out about all this stuff? About Aelita's father and all the things he did?”

“I think that's a fair representation of my hypothesis regarding the situation,” said Jeremie. “I just can't imagine why they're doing it now.”

“So, are you some kind of psychic, Aelita? With your dreams?”

“No,” she firmly responded. “I just… I don't quite know what happened last night. Usually I had dreams like that because I was stressed, or they were repressed memories breaking through… or because XANA was messing with my head. But XANA is gone and I can't remember the future, so it looks like the first one.” She turned to look at Jeremie, her lips a thin line across her face. “I don't know what you're trying to accomplish here.”

“Doesn't this… concern you at all?” Jeremie got out of his chair and walked over to the window. It was midnight by now, and the throngs of people were even larger and even rowdier. He could hear shouts even from the third floor. He could not look at Aelita, but he could feel her gaze prickling at the back of his neck. “This can't be just a coincidence. I mean, we can't… we can't ignore the consequences forever. This was really big stuff we were involved in.”

“We're not involved in it anymore,” Aelita said resolutely. “It's done. If they wanted us, they could have certainly found us. They would have come for us first. What does Yolande Perraudin have to do with anything we did? If they're looking for anyone, they're looking for my father. And they aren't going to find him. But if they want to waste their time looking, they can be my guest. I have my own life to live now.” The room was silent for a moment. “And so do you, Jeremie.”

“You sound just like Yumi,” Elisabeth said quietly. “She wouldn't have anything to do with it. She got up and walked away when I told her what I told you.” She trailed off, but audibly grumbled about being “left with the bill.”

“Of course I do. Yumi hated it all,” Aelita recalled. “It drove her away from her family, got her in trouble, almost killed her at least four times… she and I were always the targets. Some of us got it harder than the others.”

It was as if an icy dagger had been plunged into Jeremie's back. “What's that supposed to mean?” He whirled around, his glasses flying off his face. He had been louder than he meant to, and Aelita gasped. “What, like I just had a grand old time, playing around on a computer? Like I didn't spend every waking moment of my life consumed with life and death at my computer keyboard? And now I just want to take a leisurely fucking stroll down memory lane for the fun of it? Is that what you're implying?”

“Well, no, I-”

“We knew this would happen, Aelita. Why the hell did we move in the first place? Why did we all move? So it would be harder to find us! And, hey, you know why I insisted the UK over Italy? Because the UK was thinking about leaving the EU. And they did, so here we are, outside of European jurisdiction. They want to get to us, they're going to have to get through His Majesty, and the French haven't gotten past him since 1066. But how do we know they haven't gone after Ulrich? How do we know they didn't lure back Yumi? What did happen to William? We inherited your father's legacy. That's just the way it is. If they're going after people we care about, then-”

“Oh, get a hold of yourself, Jeremie!” Aelita leaped up and marched over to Jeremie, meeting him face to face. Her cheeks were red. “What is this, some sort of global fucking conspiracy?”

“Yes!” Jeremie threw his arms up, raising his voice into a shout. “What do you think got Jean-Pierre Delmas out of Kadic? He would have stayed with that school if it was on the goddamn Titanic. And you think every single person at that school that ever had contact with us, except the only person who previously worked for the government, up and leaving within a year is just a coincidence? Nurse Yolande and Michael the groundskeeper certainly didn't know your father! And Jim says Mr. Delmas is looking into old classified files. What files do you think Mr. Delmas is qualified to look into? Ones involving former employees of his, maybe? Ones that took place miles from where he's worked since practically the dawn of time?”

“Jesus Christ, Jeremie, how paranoid are you? Have you been this paranoid this whole time?” Aelita took a step back from him.

“I don't think I'm being unreasonable, I really don't! I think you're refusing to acknowledge the truth because you don't want to go back. You want to just close the door and plug your ears and pretend it never happened-”

“We were at Kadic twelve years ago! You don't think people wanted to retire, or move on? You don't think Mr. Delmas maybe wanted a better paycheck? Life does not revolve around middle school, Jeremie! It is over! We have to separate ourselves eventually! What are you proposing we do? Drop everything, leave our jobs and our apartment and just… go back to the Factory and do what? Snoop around? Try and stop them from looking into stuff that has been done and over with for over twenty years? What is there to even find from Project Carthage that would present any threat to us?”

“XANA.” The voice was quiet and tinny, but it stopped Aelita in her tracks. She turned around to see Elisabeth holding up her phone, as if she had been recording their conversation. Or rather, sending it to someone. The voice, Aelita realized, had been Yumi's.

“What… what do you mean?” Jeremie stepped closer to the phone, standing next to Aelita.

“Anyone who knows enough about all of that to know that Kadic is involved, that we were involved, already knows everything about Project Carthage and all the government stuff. What they don't know is what Franz Hopper did with it afterward. They probably know about the Supercomputer, but they don't know how it works. They don't know about what Franz Hopper built over their foundation. And they want to know about XANA. Back then, when this all started, computers were rare. Now, they're everywhere. If I was the government, and I wanted to have an edge on the enemy, I would want something like XANA.” Yumi's voice sounded angry. Bitter, even – as if she couldn't stand to say what she was saying.

“Franz Hopper created XANA to destroy the weapon Project Carthage built,” Jeremie said. “But now… XANA is the weapon they want.”

“XANA is gone,” Aelita said. “They can search all they want, they won't find him either.” She was just as bitter as Yumi.

“If they get into the Supercomputer, they can find traces,” Jeremie said quietly. “You can't really delete things from computers without physically destroying them. The multi-agent systems I built erased XANA from the network, but the data it had collected in stored in Sector 5, that's still there. And my system itself, that was built to detect all of XANA's signatures, that's still there. XANA had backups saved on the Supercomputer that I erased, but there are still echoes… really, echoes of echoes, if you know how to look. A programmer of even moderate-to-advanced caliber could construct a rough facsimile that would be… something to go on.”

“Well sure, they could build a program that acted like XANA with instructions, but it would take someone who was intimately familiar with my father's unique coding and programming patterns to build something that had genuine artificial intelligence and could act by itself,” said Aelita.

“Unless… they had access to the kinds of traces XANA left in the brains of humans,” Jeremie said, his voice hollow. “If they had access to the ways that XANA altered neurological activity in order to overwrite the minds of people with its own intelligence, that could be reverse-engineered. XANA possessed lots of people… like all the teachers at Kadic, at one point or another, or...”

“Or like William?” Yumi's voice was no longer angry. It was terrified.

The words Elisabeth had said earlier, almost as an aside, came back to Jeremie like a freight train. No one has seen or heard from William Dunbar in years. Jeremie and Aelita turned to each other in unison, eyes wide and full of fear. There was no more anger in Aelita's eyes, no bitterness in her expression. Just defeat. And exhaustion. Aelita was tired. Tired like Jeremie hadn't seen her for twelve years. But she knew, just as he did, that there was no longer any doubt. No longer any other option.

Jeremie pulled out his phone and even though it was generations removed from anything he had in middle school, his thumbs found all the contacts he needed without thinking. Ulrich, Odd, and even Yumi and Aelita, and then the words he thought he had laid to rest long ago.

“S.O.S. XANA”

Chapter Text

PART I: ALL WE'VE GOT
CHAPTER II: OSCAR

It was half past two in the morning when Oscar de la Robbia shuffled into the drug store on the corner. “Hey, take the hood off,” said a voice from the far corner of the store. Unwittingly, he removed the hood he had wrapped over his head. He did not realize that, after doing so, he stooped his head down in a subconscious attempt to remain hidden from view.

Looking left and right before heading into the aisles, Oscar had only one goal. A box of L’Oreal Paris Superior Preference hair dye, in Dark Golden Brown. It was six feet down aisle 2a, and from there it was just a few dozen feet to the registers. It was 11.88, with tax, and he had twelve dollars in his pocket. He could be out in six minutes.

“Fucking shit,” he muttered to himself as he got to the aisle. There, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly full wall of hair dye, was a gaping void right where Dark Golden Brown ought to be. He pulled out the boxes in the spots next to it, throwing them behind his shoulder, hoping there might be some hiding. There was none.

“Hey,” he called out towards the corner that had told him to take off his hood. “Can you check and see if something is in the back?”

“We ain’t got shit in the back, fruitcake,” the corner called back.

“Piece of shit,” Oscar muttered through gritted teeth. Sighing, he looked at the wall before him and gauged his options. There was “Paris Couture™ Iced Golden Brown,” but that was a dollar more, and he couldn’t afford that. “Medium Chestnut Brown” was too bright, and “Medium Copper Brown” was too red. “Shit shit shit,” he said to himself. He had to dye his hair tonight, people would start asking questions. He grabbed a lock of his hair and tried to compare it to the boxes. “No, no… god damn it.” He grabbed a box of plain old Medium Brown and walked dejectedly to the counter.

There was an old woman with curly white hair at the counter, staring up at the ceiling and humming a tune to herself. Oscar coughed. Still humming a tune, the lady looked down – though still off into space, vaguely near the cash register – and scanned the box. “’Leven eighty eight,” she said in a small voice. Oscar fished the money out of his pockets and handed it to her, bouncing on his heels and staring at the clock behind her. “Only ‘leven here, son,” the lady said.

“What? No, there should be…” Oscar stuffed his hand back in his insufferably tight pocket. There was nothing. He tried the other pocket, and even the one in his shirt. “Fuck.”

“That’s alright, son,” she said, popping the drawer. “Go on ahead.” He could barely hear her, she was so quiet. Her voice was shaky, and her hands were too.

“June, if you let him go with that you’re fuckin’ fired,” the corner called out sharply.

The lady, June, waved her small, bony hand. “Go, go, go,” she whispered. “Just take it.”

Oscar stared at her for a moment, then at the box of dye, and then grabbed it and ran. He could hear angry obscenities from behind him, but they ceased when the automatic door hissed shut. A police officer on the corner looked over at him for a moment, then turned back around and walked across the street, towards a group of kids. The night was lit by a streetlight on the corner and headlights going up and down the street.

It was a very nice thing that the lady had just done for him, Oscar told himself, but as he stared at the box of dye, all he felt was guilty. He felt like he had stolen something. That was something he told himself he wouldn’t ever do, right?

No, he hadn’t stolen anything. He just… borrowed eighty-eight cents from the drug store. He hoped the lady wouldn’t get fired. Maybe they would just take it out of her paycheck. Maybe he should go back and give her another dollar later. Yeah, he’d do that. No harm done, right?

Halfway down the block, it started drizzling rain. It wasn’t enough to bother him, but it was enough to get his glasses wet. He took them off and went to stuff them in his pocket, but remembered that his pants were so tight they would probably break. He threw his hood back up clutched his glasses and the box of dye close to his chest. Sprays of water from cars on the road hissed at him, getting his jeans damp. Far away, he could hear the dulcet tones of a police officer and the agitated voices of several young men. Oscar tightened his hood.

The door was locked when Oscar got back to his apartment. He fought with his pockets for several moments to fish out his key, and crept inside as quietly as he could. The door had a tendency to-

SLAM. The door flew back into the frame with such force he thought he heard the walls crack. Shit. He froze in place, face scrunched in fear, hoping maybe they slept through it.

A light flicked on down the hallway. Shit. Duane leaned his head out of the bedroom door, glaring down the hallway with narrowed eyes. When he saw that it was Oscar, he frowned but leaned back in and shut off the light. That would probably mean a ten dollar hike in rent. Again.

Duane and Angela Graham were a young, childless working professional couple. Or at least they had said so in the housing ad, Oscar didn’t know anything else about them. They were never home during the day, and all they asked in a renter was to be quiet at night. Well maybe they ought to fix their goddamn door. Although, Oscar reminded himself, he was not technically their renter. He was renting a third of the basement from Craig, who was the renter. For four seventy a month he got ten feet by ten feet of space, Wi-Fi, a free mattress and a space heater. Craig had even furnished the curtain that separated their space, and put up the curtain rod across the basement himself. It was crooked. But hey, it was Greenwich Village.

The stairs to the basement were in the kitchen, and that door was creaky too. He gingerly stepped on the tile, wincing as his feet squeaked with each step. The door that was probably older than his grandfather groaned as he opened it, and the noise was accentuated by Oscar muttering shit shit shit. His feet thundered on the wooden stairs, or so it seemed. He imagined a ten dollar rent increase with each step. He wouldn’t put it past Duane, who was probably the only person on Earth who had a larger stick crammed up his ass than Ulrich Stern.

Craig was passed out, sprawled over his bed with his clothes still on. There was an empty bottle of vodka next to him. Oscar’s vodka, he noted. The door to their fridge was hanging open. If that ran up the electricity, that would be another ten dollars to Duane. With a sigh, Oscar shut it and walked through the purple curtains to his “room.” There was a note sitting on his bed: “Owe you fifteen bucks for the vodka, or a b.j. You’re pick. Thx bro!” Truth be told, he would probably pick the fifteen bucks. He couldn’t buy more vodka with a blowjob from Craig.

Oscar set his glasses on his desk and peeled off his hoodie and shirt. He tried not to think about how he much he could feel his ribs as he pulled on his shirt. The small mirror that hung above his desk showed an annoying light streak across the top of his head. Roots. He had waited too long this time, people would ask questions. He leaned in closer and looked at them, running his fingers through his hair, remembering how it used to be blonde. How he used to be named Odd, and how he used to be a superhero. And then he brought his hand down and smacked himself across the face. Once, and then once more.

Oscar. His name was Oscar, like the award he would be getting someday. Oscar like de la Renta, the god of fashion, rest his soul. He lived in New York City, spoke English, and was the best damn cashier at the Midtown Office Depot. He was a filmmaker, an artist, and he had done it all on his own. He was living the dream.

He slapped himself one more time before he went back up to the bathroom to dye his hair.

--

“Oscar, get off register, we need you stocking shelves over in in school supplies.” Assistant Manager Derek shouted at him from the printer aisle. “And don’t dilly-dally with the art stuff like you always do.” Dilly-dally was Derek’s favorite word. Oscar liked to call him dilly-dally Derek. Dilly-dally Derek was 350 pounds, bald, and had a bushy, graying goatee that always had flecks of spit and food in it. Oscar desperately wanted to make a film about him. Just take his camera and follow him around all day and see what kinds of things he did. Did he have a wife? Did he have kids? Did he tell them not to dilly-dally too? Dilly-dally Derek was his favorite person.

A cart full of boxes awaited him in the notebook aisle. Amanda was also in the aisle, whispering something to herself as she sorted through five-subject notebooks. Amanda talked to herself almost all the time, she probably didn’t even know it. Oscar wanted to make a film of her too, record all her conversations and try to make sense of them. America was just full of so many fascinating people. So weird, every single one of them.

The boxes in his cart were all single subject notebooks of various colors. He began absent-mindedly opening the boxes and throwing their contents on the shelves when he realized some of them were different brands. “Oh, shit,” he muttered to himself. That box was all Mead, but the spot was for Five Star. Or were they the Office Depot brand ones? He lifted up his glasses to get a closer look at the shelf label. Mead went in location 105, and Five Star in 110. The Office Depot brand ones were on the endcap. Right.

“Are those glasses fake?” Amanda suddenly spoke up. Her voice was plain but her words hit like cannonballs.

“Wh- huh?” Odd’s hands flew up to involuntarily touch the sides of his glasses.

“You always move them when you want to actually look at something. I was wondering if they were the fake kind. It’s okay, you look good in them.” Amanda offered a smile and stared at him, patiently waiting for a response.

“Uh, they’re… they’re…. I-“ Odd forced his hands down to his sides. “They’re just. I just… need new ones! These ones don’t work right.” He swallowed. “New ones… c-can’t afford, yeah.” At his fingers clenched into fists and then stretched wide. He could feel himself sweating.

“That’s okay,” Amanda said in her unfazed, level-toned voice. She turned back to her notebooks.

Odd flung the notebooks on the shelves as fast as he could, not even bothering to check the brands anymore. He had to get out of that aisle. Away from Amanda. Maybe he would do pens and pencils next. God, he hated all the pens. He wanted to be surrounded by them for the rest of his shift. The rest of his life, if necessary, to keep away from Amanda.

Emilio was in the pens and pencils aisle. He was a forty-something man who spoke maybe eight words of English, and mainly shuffled around stocking whatever they told him to. He hadn’t spoken more than five words to Odd in the whole two years he’d been here. Fantastic. Odd was going to help him with the pens.

“You got this section? I’ll start down here,” Odd said, grabbing a box of pencils. He noticed, as he reached the end of the aisle, that he was out of breath for some reason. His hands were slick. He wiped them on his khakis and started to rip open the box. The sound of tape tearing was somehow satisfying, and the smell of wood blasted him in the face when he opened the box. He breathed deep for a moment. In, and out. In, and out.

Odd smiled. He was being entirely ridiculous. Calm down, he told himself. There’s no fire. He did indeed spend the rest of his time in the pens and pencils aisle, making sure every box was empty, every peg was full, and the Dixon Ticonderogas were all kept separate from the Stanfords. At nine that night, he stepped back to look at his handiwork. The aisle was immaculate. “Good work, Emilio,” he said, flashing a smile and a thumbs up.

Emilio smiled back and replied “Hey, new hair!”

Odd felt like he had been punched in the gut. He ran a hand through his hair, from the top of his head down to his shoulders where it rested, a shade too brown. At the edges he grabbed it tight and almost pulled, almost pulled it right out of his head, because it was wrong. It was wrong and everybody could see. Everybody could see how it was wrong and they could see right into him. They were all looking at him. They could tell he was faking. They could tell he was wrong.

He turned behind him to run, but there was a customer there, who could see him and who knew that his hair was fake. He bolted past Emilio, towards the front, looking at nothing but the door. He felt like he was shaking, his shirt felt damp and clung to him, constricting him, choking him. There was some kind of strange whining in the air, maybe some kind of alarm. It made everybody look at him. Everybody was staring at him. It did not occur to Odd that the whining was coming from him.

The automatic doors didn’t open fast enough and he ran into them. He slammed his hands on them, begging them to open. “Ouvrir, ouvrir, ouvrir,” he pleaded. “Merde!” The door finally opened and Odd practically fell out of it, running in the general direction of anywhere fucking else. Fortuitously, he ran right into a trash can. It was fortuitous because, right at that moment, Odd threw up.

It was a sickening, heaving sound, like a cat with a hairball. It echoed in the metal can, rattling Odd’s brains. He kept his head in the can, even after he was done, because he couldn’t bear to look up and see people looking at him.

“Oscar,” came a voice behind him. It sounded like Derek. Dilly-dally Derek. It was good to hear that sound, even muffled through the metal. Oscar. That was his name. Oscar.

Oscar pulled his head out of the trash can. It was indeed dilly-dally Derek who was behind him. He was holding a roll of paper towel. “Sorry,” Oscar said.

“You alright, son?” Dilly-dally Derek looked him up and down. “You didn’t get any in your hair. That takes skill.”

Oscar laughed. It was a genuine, joyous laugh that cast away the last vestiges of sickness lingering in his gut. “Just one of my many talents.”

“Listen, why don’t you take tomorrow off? Take some time to rest up. Get better.” Dilly-dally Derek clapped Oscar on the shoulder.

“Alright,” Oscar said. “I should be fine later, I just-“

“Yeah,” said dilly-dally Derek. “See you then.”

Dilly-Dally Derek really was Oscar’s favorite person.

--

“Craig, get dressed, you’re going to buy me some more vodka.” Oscar called down from the top of the stairs. There was dim, multi-colored light coming from the basement – Craig’s strings of Christmas lights. He only lit them when he was smoking, so he knew he must be awake.

“Aw, you don’t want the blow job?”

“Blowjobs don’t get me drunk. Vodka does. Come on.”

Craig surfaced a few moments later, wearing tattered jeans and a black t-shirt emblazoned with a giant, sparkling green marijuana leaf. “You know dude, your voice gets all French when you yell at me.”

“Yeah, well, then I’m gonna get a lot more French if you don’t get moving,” Oscar said. “We are wasting valuable drunk time.”

“Where are we going?” Craig ambled in front of him as they walked up the street. This was a usual question for Craig, but perhaps only because his shaggy blonde hair was always covering his eyes.

“The one on 4^th and A,” Oscar said, “I… don’t wanna go to the one on the corner.”

“That’s so far!” Craig stopped in his tracks, gesturing wildly in what he probably thought was the direction of Avenue A. It wasn’t.

“That’s what you get for drinking all my goddamn vodka.” Oscar was having none of it. Besides, Craig would forget about wanting to complain a few minutes, tops. Sure enough, though he was slow and slumped for half of the walk there, by the time they were there he was practically running.

“Look, they’ve got so many kinds of tequila! Tequila is my best friend,” Craig said happily.

“We are getting vodka, Craig. One bottle of vodka, and that’s it. Unless you want to spend anything more than that, that’s your business. But vodka first.” Oscar pointed at the back wall of the store as he walked through the door. “March.”

“You’re so mean,” Craig said, but he was smiling as he walked.

Oscar grabbed his usual bottle, something Russian that he never really bothered to read. Craig eventually decided on a bottle of the cheapest tequila on the shelf. As much as he trusted this place, it was probably paint thinner with a worm in it.

“Oh shit,” Craig said. “I forgot my ID.”

Oscar pinched the bridge of his nose. “God damn it, Craig. Just gimme the cash.”

Craig handed over his money. Why he didn’t keep it in a wallet like the rest of the world, Oscar would never know. But he couldn’t glare at Craig for too long. Damn puppy dog face.

“ID,” the guy at the counter when Oscar set the bottles down. Casting another quick look at his roommate, Oscar fished out his green card and handed it to him. “What the hell kind of name is Odd?”

Odd clenched his fists. “Um. Um.”

“I thought your name was Oscar,” Craig said.

“Check it out!” The cashier laughed and showed Odd’s card to Craig. “Are you French or Italian or what?”

“I… my name is… please, g-give that…” Odd’s voice devolved into a sort of bumbling whimper. He reached his arm out weakly but it fell back to his side, useless, as Craig grabbed the card.

“Hey, I’ve been spelling your last name wrong this whole time! Why didn’t you say something?” Craig was smiling as he looked at the card, but Odd couldn’t see it. His eyes were blurry. There was something on his glasses so he tore them off, but it didn’t help. Whatever it was was on his eyes. Crying. That’s what was happening. His chest was heaving. His ribs hurt. Everything hurt. Everyone was looking at him and he could feel it, like daggers. His throat was tightening. His shirt was damp and choking him again. Craig’s mouth was moving but he couldn’t hear anything. He had to get out. He had to go away, he had to get somewhere he could be someone else again.

Odd ran.

The sound of his feet smacking against the sidewalk gave him a sense of calm. It was rhythmic, after a while. He wasn't even sure where he was going, but eventually he found himself in an alley with no one in it. He stopped, looking around to make sure he was alone, and then slumped to the ground in exhaustion. His eyes were shut and his chest felt like it was full of fire. He was too exhausted to remember if he was Odd or Oscar, and at least for the moment, that was okay.

It was at that moment that his phone buzzed.

As far as almost everyone on Earth knew, Oscar de la Robbia did not have a phone. It was an artistic statement he had made to rebel against the societal obligation to be connected all the time. He could think better, and make better art, when he wasn't constantly worried about what everyone else in the world was doing or thinking. But he did have a phone, an old Nokia phone with a French number that he kept in his pocket for emergencies. There were only about a dozen people who had the number, none of them lived on this continent, and none of them had been particularly chatty with him in quite some time. God, he hoped no one was dead.

He dug the phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. He stared at it for quite some time, seeing the lines and shapes that normally made words but not really being able to parse them. It looked almost as if it said “S.O.S. XANA.” But that couldn't be.

No. That is what it said. It was from Jeremie Belpois and it said S.O.S. XANA.

And what the fuck, exactly, was he supposed to do? He was in New York City, he had twenty eight dollars in his checking account, and he was no longer Odd Della Robbia. He had a life here, he had art, he had… a patch of basement next to a stoner, a camcorder with a hard drive full of footage that would probably never see the light of day, and a trash can full of empty hair dye boxes, empty cans of beer, and more crumpled, sticky tissues than he cared to count. That was what he had. That was all he had. He had built up a false life and a false identity so frail it gave him panic attacks when people mentioned anything about how he looked.

He couldn't even text Jeremie back. He couldn't afford international texting, let alone an international flight. Not like he could be of any help anyway. He was sitting in an alley surrounded by garbage. He was garbage. His life had peaked 12 years ago and now he wasn't even recognizable. He didn't even know who he was anymore. There was no point in attempting to go back.

“Young man? Are you alright?” A very small, very shaky voice called to him. He wondered for a moment if it was God. But when he looked up, it was the lady from the drug store who had let him take the hair dye.

“Oh, I'm… I'm fine,” he said, scrambling to get up. He was easily a head taller than her, which was saying something. What was her name? Something like May, or April… June. It was June. She was tiny, frail and stooped over, and her hair was so white it seemed to glow on its own in the light of the streetlamps. She looked like an angel. “Did… did he fire you?”

June smiled. “Yes,” she said, but she patted him on the arm before he could say anything. “It's alright, he was a schmuck anyway. And if you want to know a secret, I don't even need the job. I just liked to have something to do.” She giggled, and it made him want to giggle too. Soon, they were both laughing together, the sound echoing through the alley and filling him up with something bright and warm.

“What are you doing in… wherever it is that we are?”

“I live just down here, son,” she said, pointing a shaking hand at a door just down the street. It was pepto-bismol pink, a spot of color on an otherwise drab and run-down narrow little building. “Why don't you come in, I'll fix you something to eat.”

Oscar was suddenly ravenous.

–

“Goodness gracious, son, don't you ever eat?” June picked up the third plate she had set down before Oscar, on which there had been generous helpings of bacon and scrambled eggs for maybe 60 seconds each. But she was smiling, and seemed to move much faster now.

“Not anything as good as this,” said Oscar, placing both hands on his satisfied, dare he admit overfull, stomach.

“You remind me of my son, he was a regular vacuum cleaner at suppertime. He had hair like yours, too.” She mussed up his hair as she walked by him to sit next to him at the table. She was so short, she could barely see over the table.

“Oh… this isn't really...” Oscar laughed as he ran a hand through his hair.

“I know. That's what I meant. He had hair that was yellow like sunshine. He dyed it too, though. He liked it black.” She smiled. “He was into all that heavy metal stuff. Back in those days men didn't ever dye their hair, but no one was gonna tell him no with all the spikes on his jacket and belt and what have you. But he was a softie.”

“Is… is he…?”

June nodded. “He was called home… oh, 40 years ago now.” She was silent for a moment. “He was into the drugs. Heroin and all that. You don't do drugs, do you son?”

“No,” said Oscar emphatically. “Well… weed, every now and then.”

“Well keep it that way. Don't be stupid. You aren't stupid, I can tell.” June patted him on the arm. “Tell me what's troubling you. Tell me what you're running from.”

Oscar looked down at June. Her eyes, now that he noticed, were a little cloudy. It hardly seemed like she ought to be able to see much at all, let alone the color his roots had been yesterday. But her eyes were grey like steel and had a spirit to them, an energy of determination, and it was clear nothing was going to get past her. It certainly wasn't worth it to try.

“Well… when I moved here… I had just dropped out of art school. In Italy. I'm from France, but I… I didn't want to go back. It was too…” He stopped. “I needed space. I have seven sisters and they're… a lot to handle. I love them and all, but I had to get some fresh air. I didn't fit in at art school, they were all so stuffy and rigid and I just wanted to make movies. I figured I could do that anywhere. But there isn't a city on Earth greater for artists than New York, so I couldn't imagine going anywhere else.”

“It didn't quite work out like you intended, did it?” June's voice was sympathetic, but knowing.

“No,” Oscar admitted. “I haven't even made a film in years. I've been here for six years. I'm practically eligible for citizenship by now. All I do is work at Office Depot and drink and smoke. But I… I don't want to do anything else. This is all I ever wanted, to be in the center of the artistic world and… live the gritty, emotional life that good artists are supposed to. I keep waiting for something to change, but it never comes.”

“Change doesn't come. You make it,” June said. “What do you think is gonna happen if you sit on your ass and smoke dope all day?”

Oscar didn't have anything to say.

“The things we imagine when we're young don't always turn out like we picture them. My son thought he was gonna be a rockstar. He died in some warehouse surrounded by bums. You said it yourself, you can make movies anywhere. Art doesn't come from where you are, it comes from inside you. You've gotta make the art, you can't just find it. Just like the change.”

“You… you're right,” Oscar said quietly. “But I-”

“Let me tell you something, son, never start a sentence with 'but.' Don't give voice to your excuses, it gives them power and holds you back. I know you're a smart young man and I know you've lived a whole lot of life. So you tell me, son, what is it that you need to do next?” June's voice was loud and strong now, and she spoke from somewhere deep in her soul.

“I need to stop trying to be someone I'm not. I need to… go home. I need to go home.” Oscar felt his eyes get hot and he let his head fall to the table. “My friends… they texted me today. There's… there's some trouble going on. I can't really… I can't really explain it, but there was always all this crap we had to deal with, and that's why I left and changed my name, because I didn't want to remember it anymore, but it's back now and… I have to go back home. But I'm afraid.” His voice cracked and he began to sob in earnest. The table was cold against his cheek but his tears were hot as they pooled around him.

There was a hand on his back, warm and soft. June rubbed his back and whispered softly into his ear “You've grown an awful lot since then. You've learned new things. Whatever it is you've gotta deal with, you're going to be better at it now than you were then. But you've gotta face the music, son. You can't be an artist if you run from the hard things in life. That's what art is for. For making sense of the hard stuff.”

Oscar lifted his head from the table and took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” He turned to face June, a grin on his face. “Yeah!”

June laughed. “Look at that. You're stronger than you think, after all.” She gave him one last pat on the back and walked over to her sofa, from under which she pulled an old, rusty metal box. “Since I think you probably don't have a plane ticket to France lying around…” She opened the box and set it in front of Oscar.

Oscar looked down at the box, and then up at June, and then down to the box again. “This… this is ten thousand dollars.”

“Actually it's $9,900, I slipped a hundred out to take to the casino last month.” She chuckled. “I told you I didn't need the job, didn't I? When I was younger I invested some money in this hotshot new company called Apple. Turned out to pay pretty well. Go ahead and take it son, it's just money and I've got plenty more. That was just my 'fuck you' money.”

Oscar stared at June for a moment, unsure of what to say or even how to react. But he found himself taking the bundle of bills and stuffing it into his pants anyway. “Th… thank you,” he finally said. “Thank you so much.”

“You just go ahead, call a cab, and head right to the airport. Buy a nice ticket, not a cheap one. Get a room at the airport hotel and get a good night's rest, and tomorrow when you fly home you can buy some new clothes and be a new man.” June patted him on the cheek and held her hand there for a moment, smiling. “It's okay, to make yourself new when you need to. Just remember that you'll always have your memories with you. You can't shed them. You have to let them be part of who you are.”

“Yeah,” said Oscar.

“And before you go… I never got your name, son.”

The young man paused. “Odd. Odd Della Robbia. I've gone by Oscar here, but… I'm Odd.”

June patted him on the cheek one last time. “It was nice to meet you, Odd. Now go on and get to the airport. You've got people waiting for you.”

Chapter Text

PART I: ALL WE'VE GOT
CHAPTER III: AELITA

 “I'm sorry, Madame Belpois, but… is this a typo in your passport?”

Aelita looked up at the face of the border guard. He was looking from her passport up to her and then back again. She offered a smile and a small laugh, but said in a small voice “No, that's right.”

“But it… it says you're thirty-six years old! You couldn't possibly...”

“You're very sweet, but I promise… I can show you my driver's license, if-”

“No no, that's quite alright. But that's amazing! Simply amazing, you don't look a day over thirty!” The guard's face was a broad grin, as if he was in genuine awe. From behind Aelita, Jeremie grumbled. Aelita brushed a lock of hair from her face, making a point to do so with her ring finger. The diamond in her engagement ring seemed to take some of the awe out of the guard's face. “Ahem. Thank you, Madame. Next, please.”

Aelita took a step to the side and motioned with her finger for Elisabeth to come join her; she had already walked halfway down the corridor to the train platform. “Just to give you a heads up… Jeremie is about to be 'randomly selected' for additional security screening.” Her voice was low, and she tried to look neutrally, straight ahead. But she could feel Jeremie's red hot gaze on her face anyway. He couldn't stand border crossings, because two things were always certain. The male border guards would always marvel over Aelita's age, and border guards of any gender were sure to pull Jeremie aside.

“Ah, sir, I'm afraid I'm going to need you to join me in my office for a few moments,” the guard said as he looked down at his screen. “Looks like you're my lucky winner.” He offered a chuckle, but Jeremie did not repeat it. While Aelita could not see much of the screen, she did seem to note that Jeremie's name was written in bold, red letters.

“How long does this usually take?” Elisabeth's gaze followed Jeremie as he was escorted into the security office. Aelita continued to stare straight ahead.

“When we visited last Christmas, he was in there for an hour. I'm not sure what they do in there, they've never let me go in with him and he doesn't like to talk about it.” She turned to Elisabeth with a pained look on her face. “He… gets embarrassed, please try and-”

“I won't tell a soul, Aelita.” She placed a hand on Aelita's shoulder. “But… I do have to catch the train, I need to be back at work ASAP. I'll catch up with you tomorrow, alright? You two get settled.”

“Right. Thank you for coming with us, and thank you for...” Aelita paused for a moment, trying to come up with the correct word. “Thank you for believing in us.”

“No, Aelita, thank you.” With a kiss to the air next to Aelita's cheek, Elisabeth turned and headed back down the hall. Aelita sat down on a chair on the wall, next to the door, listening to the rolling of suitcases in the distance. It was well into the evening, but Aelita felt like it was 5 in the morning and she hadn't slept in two days. She leaned her head back on the wall and shut her eyes, hoping perhaps Jeremie might come and wake her up whenever he was done. But sleep did not come.

The voice of her supervisor came to her in the darkness of the back of her eyelids. It was a low voice, full of concern and fear. “I'm so sorry, Aelita.” It repeated over and over again, so relentless she snapped her head back up and pulled out her phone in vain hopes of finding some distraction. As she pulled her phone from her purse she saw the neatly folded piece of paper Elisabeth had given her. Seeing it made Aelita feel sick, so she obscured it with packs of gum and pads and then dropped her purse to the ground, as if to pretend that if she could not see it, it was not there.

It was a doctor's letter. It said that Aelita had end-stage ovarian cancer. She didn't, of course, but it was a “favor” Elisabeth had done for her so she and Jeremie could leave work and drop out of contact for extended periods of time without much prying. It had all been a very thoughtful ruse they had dreamed up. Aelita's personal gynecologist from France, an old friend, had come up to personally deliver the test results. Aelita had never mentioned feeling ill because she was afraid of worrying anyone.

The letter itself was written in French, and while they had gotten a certified translation of the contents, the translator did not worry about the text in the letterhead, which upon close inspection would have revealed Elisabeth Delmas was an intern. And even if they had done their research, it wasn't as if an intern wasn't legally allowed to diagnose conditions or even prescribe treatment, it was just out of the ordinary. “But who would demand that kind of rigor when someone just told you they're dying of cancer?” Jeremie had said. Those words swirled around in her head, too.

For a moment, she wondered if this sickening, empty feeling was what cancer patients felt, but she quickly dispelled such thoughts. No, this is what liars felt. She had just committed one of the most detestable acts of fraud a person could commit. Suddenly, she felt like she was going to be sick. In a cold sweat, she stood up and looked around for a restroom, but her stomach settled and she sat back down with a pink, burning face. The border guard, a woman who had replaced the flirtatious man now probably giving her husband a cavity search, stared at her for a moment. Aelita wanted nothing more than to just melt into nothingness.

The border crossing was a sterile, off-white room with plastic chairs and a small TV. It was muted, and the only sound was from the murmuring of people in line to cross or their luggage as it rolled down the corridor. It was a newly constructed room that had little in the way of amenities; true border crossings had been alien to France for over a decade until the United Kingdom had left the EU two years previously. It was if they had just thrown together what they had left over from before the border treaty, or perhaps whatever was laying around in a warehouse. The TV looked to be about as old as Jeremie. It reminded her of a doctor's office, complete with the occasional cough or sniffle from the people in it. That just made her feel worse.

What had she lied for? A vacation, essentially, except instead of going to the Riviera or Corsica or somewhere pleasant she was going to bury her life in espionage and deception and secrets, living in shadows, always in fear of what was around the corner. Again. She tried to think of what it meant the first time, the desire to to help people, the feeling that they were the only ones who could do what had needed to be done, the… rush of the action. How had she been able to do it back then, and why couldn't she summon that strength now? Her hollow, soulless feeling of guilt was unshakable. She was dreading having to see Jeremie's parents, normally lovely people who would certainly fall all over themselves once they heard her 'news.'

“I'm so sorry, Aelita,” her supervisor said in her head again. The image of Jeremie's mother with tears welling in her eyes appeared before her, saying the words her supervisor had said. Her stomach dropped into her knees and she knew then that she was about to be sick. She jumped up from her chair and bolted down the hall until she found the restrooms.

The walls were grey, the stalls were grey, and the tile that her knees fell onto were grey as she clutched the bowl of the toilet and vomited. She had not bothered to close the stall behind her, but someone did as they walked past. They said nothing. She stared at the grey tiles for a moment, trying to think of anything other than Jeremie's mother. There was water in the black grout and the floor smelled sharp and acrid and suddenly she felt disgusting. She leaped up and took several deep breaths before flushing. Staring down at the tile as to not meet anyone's eyes as she walked to the sink, she washed her hands for three straight minutes. Silent tears rolled down her face but all it did was make her scrub her hands harder.

“Madame?” A soft hand touched Aelita's shoulder and she flinched away with a gasp. Her side bumped into the sink and with a cry of pain she fell down onto the floor. It was wet, and she prayed it was water from the sink.

The female border guard who had stared at her earlier was standing above her. Without a second thought she quickly grabbed Aelita's arm and pulled her up, brushing off her shoulders and back. “Are you alright?”

“I… I, uh,” Aelita didn't know how to respond.

“Your husband is looking for you,” she said softly. “Should I tell him you need some time?”

“No, no,” Aelita said quickly. “No, I'm alright.”

Aelita and the border guard – her name badge said she was Captain Lachapelle of the Border Police – walked back to the waiting room together, her hand never leaving Aelita's shoulder. Aelita felt like she didn't deserve her compassion. Jeremie was waiting with his and her suitcases in hand, a concerned look on his face. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Aelita said, still looking at the floor. “Are you free to go?”

“Yeah,” Jeremie sighed, “they just put me through the wringer.” He stepped over to his wife and placed a hand on her shoulder, rubbing it softly. “C'mon, let's get going.”

Captain Lachapelle stepped away and walked back into the office, casting one last look at the couple with a faint smile. As she was shutting the door, she stopped for a moment and called out to Jeremie and Aelita “Welcome home.”

–

“I figured we'd stay in a hotel tonight so my parents have some extra time to get things around,” said Jeremie as he pulled up to some nondescript, several story building. It was grey. Aelita felt sick.

“I haven't been paying attention, where are we?” Aelita looked around. She had spent a lot of time in a lot of places in Paris but this all seemed unfamiliar. Or maybe she was just disoriented – she had spent most of the drive from Calais napping on and off.

“Boulogne,” Jeremie answered. “My parents and I stayed at this hotel once. It's got great bathrooms.”

Aelita didn't say anything as they walked into the lobby. It had all the trappings of a hotel that wanted to remind you it was in Paris, with tiled floors and a chandelier and gold accents everywhere possible. For a moment Aelita worried about how expensive this hotel was, but she noted the “marble” counter top at the desk was just peeling laminate.

“Hello, reservations for Belpois?” Jeremie asked sweetly. Aelita jerked her head over to face him, but he was busy with the clerk. He handed over his passport and his credit card and Aelita could feel her heart begin to race. Here they were planning some sort of underground resistance to government agents and he was booking a hotel just miles from the Factory under his own name?

“You'll be in room 203,” the clerk said, and before he could even hand Jeremie a keycard, Aelita was already on her way there.

“Meet you there,” she called out, halfway to the elevator. Her heels clacked rapidly on the tile floor and a family stared at her as they walked out, but Aelita paid them no mind. She had been stared at enough today to be immune by now. The elevator doors shut and she exhaled, without even having realized she had been holding her breath at all. They were less than 24 hours into whatever this all was and she was already breaking up. She tried to regulate her breathing as she made her way to 203, but all she ended up doing was sounding like she had emphysema.

She had to wait for Jeremie to get there with the keys before she could get in. He arrived a few minutes later with both suitcases in hand and a bewildered look on his face. But he was silent as he opened the door and said nothing until it was closed and locked behind them. “Are you doing okay, Aelita? You've been… well, you've been pretty-” He stopped. “That was a stupid thing to say. Of course you aren't. I'm sorry.” He sat down on the bed and then flopped back, staring up at the ceiling. “If you're wondering why I used our real names for booking the room, I figured I had already been flagged at the border so there wasn't any reason hiding, they know we're here. And they know where my parents live anyway and that we'd be going there eventually.”

Aelita sat next to Jeremie and placed a hand on his thigh. “You're right,” she said with a sigh. “I just panicked. I've been on edge. I… hate this… cancer thing we did. It makes me sick.”

“I figure we'll just tell my parents that you're sick, they won't ask any more questions,” Jeremie said continuing to stare straight up. There was a sudden layer of fatigue to his voice. “They know not to ask questions.”

They were silent for a very long time. Eventually Aelita felt herself begin to slump back as well, until she was laying next to Jeremie with her hand in his. “It hurts to lie again,” she said, more to herself than to her husband.

“Yeah.”

“I think your parents will know that we're lying.” Her voice was quiet now.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we're strong enough? To do this again?”

Jeremie didn't say anything.

“Jeremie?” Aelita turned to look at him. He was still looking up, but his eyes were shut, and Aelita wondered for a moment if he had fallen asleep.

“No,” Jeremie said finally. “I don't.” He was silent, but his mouth was still open, as if there were still words lingering at the edge of his lips. “In all honesty, we shouldn't have even planned to go to my parents'. I should have used some of the other passports to come in. I still had some of them. But I just… I didn't want to go back to that. I didn't want to risk it. I was scared. I'm scared now.”

“You made a risk assessment,” Aelita said, squeezing his hand. “I think you made the right choice. I think they already know all your aliases anyway. The… real government, I mean, not… the Carthage people. You admitted them in the plea deal, remember?”

Jeremie was silent.

“Oh, Jeremie,” Aelita sighed. “I love you, you know that, right?” She rubbed her thumb on Jeremie's hand. They were clammy, slick, and they almost seemed to be shaking. “We're in this together, you and I. For better or worse. I'm with you.” She pulled his arm tighter against hers. “I'm with you.”

“I think we'll still have some element of surprise, at least for a few days,” Jeremie continued after a while. He was shaking a little less. “Just by virtue of us coming into the country, they don't know we're here because we know. They have no indication that we would think anything, for now. I don't think they'll really care until Odd and Ulrich both arrive.” Jeremie spoke in a monotone voice, probably more to calm himself then anything. His eyes were still shut, but his thumb was moving on Aelita's hand as well, just ever so slightly. “It might even spook them.”

“So… what are we doing, Jeremie?”

“We need to do two things. We need to find William before they do, and we need to keep the Supercomputer out of their control. And that's already done. Even though hey already know where it is, and even if they've tried to activate it, there's almost no way they can use it. A little while after we shut it down I went back to install some encryption on the initial start-up routines.”

“What did you do?”

“I altered the boot loader so that it would only initialize if given an authentication key from another network location. It's all pretty simple but there's no way to get into the Supercomputer without it.” Jeremie's voice lightened for a moment. It seemed to brighten his mood to talk about programming, even if it was something so simple.

“What… what location?”

“Well, the key gets sent to my old laptop, which is still at my parents' house. But it's a two-factor authentication process, so the key has to be input through another device.”

“What other device? Why are you being coy?” Aelita got up and loomed over her husband with a frown.

“Well… there are only so many devices that have been linked to the Supercomputer,” Jeremie said. “I didn't want to go through the process of downloading all those weird drivers onto anything else, so I went with the only other thing that was available.”

“What? What is it?”

“Odd's old Game Boy.”

Aelita blinked. “… What?”

“That Game Boy he had, we hooked it up once to get extra processing power… remember that time I was virtualized wrong and you had to get all the way towers to... anyway, they used the Game Boy to help get me back and it never worked right after so I just kept it.” Jeremie chuckled.

“Oh yeah. But how would you even input the code with it? It isn't a network device. It doesn't even have a keyboard.” Aelita was genuinely mystified. “Why were you being so guilty ab- oh, Christ, Jeremie, you don't know where it is, do you?”

“Eheheh.” Jeremie gulped. “No. But, to answer your other question, that's the genius of it! It has to be wired directly in to the Supercomputer. And the system does have ten buttons that can be used for input, I coded the authentication keys to only use A, B, X and Y with other characters for the directional pad and select and start that only I know the correspondence to. So in order to boot up the Supercomputer, you would have to have me, my laptop, and Odd's Game Boy all together at the Factory.” He flashed a smile, hoping to dispel Aelita's grimace. It did not.

“Well if you don't know where it is then we're SOL,” Aelita said.

“Truth be told, it would probably be a bad move to go to the Factory anyway. We don't really need the Supercomputer, I don't think, and this way it's even more likely that it stays out of their hands.” Jeremie shut his eyes again. “All I'm concerned with is finding out where William went. I'll check for missing persons reports and look into public records, and once everybody's here we'll all do some asking around, and we'll try and see if we can't get some of the teachers to tell us what happened to them.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Aelita said, laying back down. “And when you say public records...”

“Death records,” Jeremie said simply. “If he just ran away somewhere and no one has heard from him in years, well...”

They were silent again for several moments. By the time Aelita leaned up to say something again, Jeremie had fallen asleep. Deciding it would be best just to let the day end, she laid back down and shut her eyes as well. It was not long before she was asleep.

Thankfully, she did not dream.

–

Jeremie's mother was a thin woman who wore a lot of perfume. Today she smelled like stargazer lilies, and Aelita could smell her from the other end of the sofa. Her hair, a platinum blonde that was teetering precipitously on silver, was pulled back tightly into a ponytail. It made her face look older, almost. Aelita could make out the lines around her eyes and mouth. It seemed like she had aged quite a bit since even just last Christmas. Perhaps she had just stopped dyeing her hair. Normally when Mme. Belpois had her hair back, she was gardening. Historically she did not like to be interrupted when she was out in her garden, but there she was, perched at the edge of the sofa cushion.

“Aelita… I want to ask you a question.” Jeremie's mother turned to face her. She was smiling, in her eyes and on her lips, and with her hands folded delicately on her lap she gave the sense of someone genuinely trying to be disarming and gentle. Normally that was one of her strengths, but at the moment, Aelita only felt afraid.

“Sure,” Aelita said, offering a small smile of her own.

“How… is Jeremie doing? Is he doing… better?”

It was almost a relief to hear her ask what she had. It was an old concern she was worried about, not a new one. She felt her smile change into a genuine one, a broad grin of relief. Immediately, Jeremie's mother relaxed, easing back into the sofa with an audible sigh. “Yes,” Aelita said. “Ever since he got his job with the Stock Exchange he… he's almost an entirely new person. It keeps him sharp, all the work he does.”

“It keeps him busy, then,” Jeremie's mother said, with a smile.

“It keeps him out of trouble.” Aelita laughed.

“That's good. That's good.” Jeremie's mother took another deep breath. “When you two left, I was… well, I wasn't sure how things would work out for you. Going off on your own, so far away from everyone, so soon after you had gone through all those troubles. But it's clear that a little space and fresh air was exactly what you needed.” Mme. Belpois patted Aelita on the leg. “I'm glad you've gotten everything together. And I'm glad you came to visit!” She stood up and took a deep breath. “Oh, what was it that you were saying earlier? So-”

It was at that moment that Jeremie and his father came back into the room. They had gone into his father's study for one of their quiet conversations, as had been the usual Belpois family tradition since Jeremie was in high school. The look on Michael Belpois' face was enough to stop his wife in her tracks. His expression was so stern it could have been carved in stone, and it rivaled Ulrich's father's in intensity. Jeremie's mother appeared to have aged quite a bit since Christmas, but his father had aged ten years in the past half an hour. His eyebrows were creased and there was a bright red spot at the bridge of his nose, as if he had been squeezing it in a vice. For his part, Jeremie appeared to have melted into the floor. He was small and pale and he had returned to shaking slightly.

Mme. Belpois looked from her husband to her son, and instantly her shoulders drooped. “What's happened?”

“Nothing,” said Jeremie's father simply. Never in her life had Aelita ever heard him speak with such… finality. Michael had always been an upbeat, friendly man. “But Jeremie and Aelita will not be staying with us.”

“Wh… what? Why?” Mme. Belpois took a step towards her husband, but almost seemed afraid. Aelita had never seen him like this, but apparently neither had she.

Mr. Belpois did not look at his wife, nor anyone else in the room. He stared straight ahead, perhaps at the picture of his infant son at the wall, or perhaps just at the front door. “Because my patience has reached its end.”

“Michael, you're being-” Mme. Belpois took another step, her eyebrows creasing to match her husband's. Her eyes, blue like her son's, seemed to turn to ice as she looked into her husband's stone cold face.

“I am finished with all this… this… with all of this!” He sharply waved his hands to indicate “finality” as his face began to turn red. “I will not have my house-”

“In thirty years of marriage you have never raised your voice to me, Michael Belpois, and I do not intend to start letting you do so now!” Mme. Belpois' voice raised to match Michael's, and she walked up until their faces were nose-to-nose. “We are parents, Michael, we do not get to pick and choose when we support our children and when we do not. We've had this discussion dozens of times!” She turned to look at her son, who was now red-eyed and visibly trembling. If his parents had aged, Jeremie now looked to be nothing more than a child, hiding in the corner as his parents fought. “What's happened, Jeremie? What's going on?”

With a sour grimace, Michael whispered something into his wife's ear. In an instant, the bright and righteous light in Mme. Belpois' eyes was extinguished.

“Aelita… Jeremie… perhaps it would be best if you left,” was all she said.

“M- Mo-” Jeremie stammered, looking up at his mother with tearful eyes. “Please...”

“This house will always be here for you when you need safety and shelter,” she said quietly, “but right now, what you need is not something we can provide for you. When you are ready, we will welcome you back with open arms. But the time has come for us to let go of the bicycle, and, if need be… let you fall.” Jeremie's mother stroked a finger down Jeremie's face. “I love you, son.”

Jeremie's father stepped back into his study for a moment, then came back out with an envelope that he handed to his son without a word. Jeremie took it, looked up to his father, then stuffed it in his pocket and began to walk away. He said nothing. Aelita walked with him, not looking at the in-laws who in many ways had been the only parents she had ever known. She could feel them looking at her, or at least she imagined she could, feeling ice cold daggers pressed on her back. Her last thought as she stepped out of the house was that the steps down to the sidewalk were grey.

Beside her, Jeremie was sniffling. He sniffled all the way to the car, and for perhaps about a kilometer down the street until he began to cry in earnest. Aelita, who had not driven a car since they moved to London and was white-knuckling the steering wheel, said simply “Carthage has already spoken to them.”

“What?”

“Why else would your father have that money ready so quickly? He had it in an envelope ready to go. They've already spoken to them, and they already knew we were going to be in trouble.” Aelita spoke through gritted teeth, though mainly due to driving stress than anything.

“Oh Aelita… he's had that envelope ready since the second time I went to jail,” Jeremie said through sobs. “He's just finally… he's finally given up.”

“Did you get a good look at your mother? She's aged five years in the past seven months. In the four years we've been dropping in to visit, she has always finished whatever she was doing in her garden before she came in to see us. While you were in with your father, she was dead silent until the last few minutes when she finally asked if you had been in any trouble. She's never asked me that, it was always your father who talked about the trouble. When I told her you hadn't been, she looked so relieved I could see the stress physically leave her body. She was definitely under the impression you were in major trouble. And why would she think that unless someone came to her and told her you were?” Aelita paused to mutter a few choice words at the driver ahead of her before swerving into another lane to get to the exit she needed.

“You said earlier today that your parents knew not to ask questions anymore. And that was true. Obviously your mother had spent a lot of time trying to keep the sanctuary of their house intact, and she is not a weak woman. She has been able to succeed for eight solid years, through all the shit you brought into that house. She was even trying through this. But your father is… well, he's smarter than you give him credit for. He knows that what is happening now is far more serious than a few charges of identity theft and hacking. So what he's telling us is that we shouldn't stay in his house because they know about it and it probably isn't safe. It might even be monitored.” Aelita took a few deep breaths and tried to tell herself it was just a coincidence that two identical jet black sedans had just pulled up on either side of her. She slowed and they sped on. Aelita breathed, even as the driver behind her honked their horn.

“Why wouldn't he just say that, then?”

“So if they're ever questioned, they have plausible deniability and can say that they kicked us out for old transgressions, not new ones. And what's most important is that if they question just your mother, that's what she'll think as well. What did you and your father talk about? Did you actually tell him the truth?”

“No… I just said that you were sick, but then he asked with what and I told him the story… but then he started asking questions about, like… what the doctor had recommended for therapy and a bunch of medical stuff I didn't know the answer to, so he could tell I was lying. He asked what was going on and I said I couldn't tell him, he wouldn't understand… then he railed into me about how I was always lying and how he was tired of the secrets and the espionage and then he told me he was done and we went out and… yeah.” Jeremie had stopped crying, but his voice was still hushed.

“If your father really wanted to kick you out for lying, he really would have given you that envelope after you got out of jail,” Aelita said. “He's made it this far. But what's especially beneficial about that money is that it was withdrawn years ago, far before they probably started tracking his finances. How much is in there?”

Jeremie pulled the envelope out of his pocket and counted the bills. “Five thousand,” he said. “And… what's this?” From the envelope, Jeremie pulled a key. “I think it's a safe deposit box key?”

“What bank?”

“Uh, HSBC,” Jeremie said, squinting at the key. “I think it says on Rue des Pyrénées in Belleville? Why the hell would my father have a bank account in-”

“Because Belleville is on the opposite end of Paris from Boulogne,” Aelita said simply. “And I imagine he chose HSBC because it's an international bank.” Aelita swerved into the far left lane and floored it. “Text Elisabeth and Yumi to have them meet us there. Oh, and at some point we're going to have to dump this car, since it's registered in your name. We're going to need to start taking this a bit more seriously.”

“At the rate you're driving, you'll dump it with us in it,” Jeremie muttered.

Aelita grinned as she wove through traffic just to make her husband squirm. “Another thing we're going to have to do is lighten up.”

-

The contents of the safe deposit box were one (1) laptop computer, seventeen (17) Compact Discs, three (3) USB flash drives, two (2) notebooks, one (1) sealed envelope, one (1) framed photograph, and one (1) Nintendo Game Boy handheld that the bank employee was certain to note was not functional before it was placed in storage. The photograph was a familiar one; it was Aelita and Jeremie and all their friends sitting on the bench at Kadic. The various notebooks and storage media were all various things Jeremie had complied over his time on various computers at various schools, some of it irrelevant but perhaps by pure coincidence, the rest of it all highly critical notes on the operation of Lyoko and the Supercomputer, including the entire set of Franz Hopper's diary. The laptop, of course, was the very same one he had carried with him every day at Kadic. The sealed envelope was a note, unsigned, that said only “I saved a few things that seemed like they might be important. Be safe.” How Michael Belpois had known a non-working Game Boy could be important, Aelita did not know. She wished dearly she had the time to think about what that might mean. As it was, all she could do was marvel at how just much like his son he really was.

The gang, still without Odd or Ulrich but with Elisabeth, all sat at a table in the corner of a packed cafe across the street from the bank. It was the first time Aelita and Jeremie had seen Yumi in almost a decade. She was taller than ever, and her hair was much longer, but she still dressed in all black, and there was no mistaking her for anyone else but Yumi Ishiyama.

“Jeremie, I like what you've done with your hair. Short is a good look for you, you look so… grown up.” She smiled. “Both of you do. How long has it been?”

“Nine years,” Aelita said, absentmindedly stirring her coffee. “Can you believe it?”

“No, I really can't,” Yumi said. “It feels like it's been five minutes.” She paused. “Of course, some days it feels like it's been a century.”

“So… how is your mother doing?” Aelita's voice was quiet, but she knew the question had to be broached eventually.

Yumi, however, shrugged. “She's doing fairly well at the moment. She has her ups and downs. We're still… not quite sure what she's got. Seems to be some kind of immune dysfunction, she's getting different things all the time. She just got over pneumonia. Hey, can I get another beer?” Yumi waved at the waiter who was walking by. He nodded. “To be honest, it's nice to be back in Paris. Kyoto never worked out like I'd hoped.” She laughed out loud, causing people from across the room to look at her. Yumi seemed not to notice, or at least not to care. “How is London?”

“Oh, London's a lot of fun, we like it there,” Aelita said, patting Jeremie on the hand. He hadn't spoken much since the car ride. The note from his father still sat in his lap, and he was staring at the table like soldiers stared into the distance in old war photographs. “Our place is right above a pub though, which can be… annoying.”

“I lived in this place in Kyoto for a while that was across the street from a gay bar,” Yumi said with a grin. “I know what you mean. I liked that place. Rent was outrageous though.”

“What do you do?”

“All kinds of jobs. At that time I was a receptionist in a dentist's office, although I've been a radio announcer, I've worked in a nail salon, I was a TV weather announcer for like two weeks, that was something, oh and I-”

“Uh, I know you've got a lot to catch up on,” Elisabeth said, “but, uh, I was under the impression we were here to discuss more urgent concerns?” She was still in her scrubs, a deep burgundy shade that matched the wine she was drinking. “Not that I really understand all of what they mean, but y'know.”

“Elisabeth has a point,” Aelita said. “Although I'm definitely going to want to hear the weather announcer story eventually.” She paused, trying to judge if the din of the cafe was enough to prevent anyone from making out what she was about to say. The waiter returned at that moment with Yumi's beer and asked if anyone else needed anything. “No, thank you,” Aelita said with a smile. “In fact, could you leave us be for a little while?” The waiter, though apparently confused, nodded and walked away. “So, we all know why we're here. I suppose, I should ask… I don't suppose you've heard anything more about William than we have, Yumi?”

Yumi took a generous swig of beer and then shook her head. “I probably know less than you do. I mean, he and I texted a little after we left Kadic, but it dropped off after a while. We stopped really speaking within… six months, I think.”

“What kinds of things did you talk about? Did he mention where he was going to school?” Aelita leaned forward to try and hear Yumi over the sounds of the crowd.

“It was mainly just small talk. He was… a little flirtatious, but mainly we just talked about whatever came to mind. How are you, what are you up to, did you watch this show last night, that kind of thing. I remember him distinctly saying that his father was considering sending him to a school abroad but he convinced him to stay in France. I know he told me the name of the school, but I don't remember it.”

“Did he live in France? To be honest I'm not even sure where he's from,” Jeremie said, suddenly snapping back up. “Dunbar… isn't that an English name?”

“Scottish, I think,” Aelita said. “Although I don't know either.” Everyone at the table turned to Yumi.

“Well he was obviously fluent in French so I always figured he'd been here as long as I had,” Yumi said. “But I don't really know. He never mentioned.”

“I think I saw him once, in our last year in Kadic,” Elisabeth said. “It would have been after he graduated, and I didn't say anything, but I saw him at a Metro station, and I recognized him because he had the same messenger bag and brown jacket.”

“Do you remember what station?” Jeremie's gaze was intense now.

Elisabeth paused. “I was getting off the train, I'm pretty sure, so I was probably coming home from something, but he was getting on the train. It was probably at Billancourt, I liked to get off there and walk by the shops before going home.”

“What direction? What direction was your train going?” Jeremie was leaning over the table now, his face as close to Elisabeth's as possible.

“Um… away from the city center?”

“Then he was going to Pont de Sèvres,” Jeremie said, his face alight in realization. “That's the end of Line 9. The only notable private high school in the area is Breteuil Academy, across the river in Sèvres, so he must have been going to school on the train. If it was in the evening, that probably indicated he was a boarder, but then, what would he be doing in Boulogne? I doubt he took the Metro just one station and back, he must have been on a longer trip and that was just a side stop he took. What time of year was this, Sis- er, Elisabeth?”

“Towards the end of the year. I think I had been shopping for a dress for graduation,” she said. “Come to think of it, I remember that William had been carrying some shopping bags too.”

“If he had the means to go shopping I think we can presume he was doing well, at least in his parents' good graces. Probably doing well in school, so at least at that time he wasn't running away,” Jeremie said, more to himself than anyone else. “And probably, relatively well adjusted. So that's good. Maybe his school knows something more about him. I'll visit tomorrow.”

“Won't that tip them off? If we go looking around his old school so quickly?” Yumi finished the last dregs of her beer and leaned back in her chair. Almost too subtly to notice, she cast a glance around the room to see if anyone was paying particular attention. No one was, so she leaned back in again, resting her chin on her hand.

“Aelita and I are already operating under the assumption that they know where we are and can track our movements. They definitely know she and I are here, since I… well, I'm flagged as a high-risk traveler at the border. When Odd goes through customs that will definitely tip them off. They're already several steps ahead of us and they already know who and what to look for. It's less important that we act secretly, though obviously we want to deter as much notice as is possible, as it is important that we act quickly and efficiently to get as much information as we can. All we have to do is find William before they do, and then we can regroup and determine what we can do to stop their other plans.” Jeremie was talking quickly now, almost breathlessly. His eyes were bright and darting quickly from face to face, with all trace of his previous lethargy gone.

“Wait, why are we assuming that? That they already know to look for us? How do we even really know they're actively looking around now?” Elisabeth spoke in a hushed whisper. “There's no need to be frantic if we don't have to be.”

“You yourself said that all our old teachers have vanished. And they've already spoken to my parents. We… won't be able to rely on them for any assistance,” Jeremie said. “The only reason they would go to these people is if they knew they were connected to us.”

“Right,” Elisabeth said, even more quietly.

“We're going to need to start at the basics. Vital records. If anyone named William Dunbar has died in Paris in the last twelve years, there will be a certificate. I'll look for that. Aelita, you should go to the National Police and see if there are any missing person reports or records of crimes under his name. Yumi, I know you have things to handle at home, but if you could make calls to anyone you know from Kadic, we can try and see if he ever got in touch with anyone else. I can get you phone numbers. And Elisabeth, try and get something out of Yolande Perraudin at work.” Everyone nodded, and everyone suddenly seemed energized, but none more so than Jeremie.

In a moment, Jeremie Belpois had gone from a hollow wreck right back to a leader of warriors. He was grinning, speaking with his hands, and color was rushing to his face. His voice had returned to full volume, and for the first time since the entire ordeal had started, there was no trace of fear in his voice or in his actions. Jeremie looked like he felt more alive than he had in quite some time.

This, Aelita thought to herself, was always the first sign of trouble. But she looked around at her friends, and she thought for a moment of her father and what it would mean for their work to be undone, so she cast the thoughts aside. The waiter walked past and glanced at her, so Aelita indicated with her hand for a round of refills.

“We have to avoid the Factory at all costs,” Jeremie was saying as Aelita tuned back in. “They're almost certainly watching that more than anything. And probably the Hermitage too, if it's even still standing, although I doubt there was much to salvage from it. We're going to need a new base of operations that's a little more convenient than a cafe on the wrong side of the city...”

“We can worry about that out of earshot,” Aelita said, placing a hand gently on Jeremie's shoulder. He stopped and looked over to her, and then eased back into his seat and took a deep breath.

“Right,” he said. “I guess I got a little excited. But, more than anything, we need to remember what this all means. We worked hard, harder than anything, to put this all to rest. If they get their hands on… what they are looking for, then that's it.” He brought his voice down to a low whisper, motioning for everyone to lean in. “If they get XANA, that's the end. We aren't schoolkids anymore, we can't throw away our lives again to stop him again. I hope you all understand that we need to do everything we can, everything that it is possible for us to do, to stop that from happening.”

Everyone around the table nodded.

“So we're going to find William Dunbar. We're going to get him somewhere safe, because he is the key they need to bring back what we destroyed. We all left this place as soon as we could, because we were tired and weary and wanted nothing to do with what we remembered. But William… was always curious. William never...” Jeremie frowned as he tried to think of the right way to phrase what he was thinking. “William was never a member of our group quite like the rest of us. I think a part of him still wants that. I don't think he went far from here.”

The waiter returned with a tray full of drinks. “Thank you,” Aelita said as he set them down. The coffee was hot, and she held it for a moment just to enjoy the feeling of warmth. It made her feel a little more human. Aelita raised her mug in the air and looked around at her table of friends. “To William,” she said.

“To William.”

Chapter Text

PART I: ALL WE'VE GOT
CHAPTER IV: ULRICH

“Look, there's one thing you're going to need to understand, and that's that I don't really get fashion.” Ulrich Stern gestured down at his body, which at the moment was draped in what he could really only describe as some sort of bright orange toga. “You tell me to wear this and walk back and forth, I can do that. But don't ask me to talk about it to people.”

Sergio exhaled through his nose. “Do you want to know something, Ulrich? You don't get fashion? Okay, neither do 95% of fashion journalists. You could pull something out of your ass on the spot and they would all gasp and coo and think you're a genius. No one here is from the New York Times, you'll be okay. This is a pretty low-key thing, mostly people in my circle.”

Ulrich arched an eyebrow. “This thing is visible from space, I don't think you can really pass it off as low-key.”

“Neons are in, Ulrich. Neons are in. The Roman aesthetic is meant to be a callback to force, stability, and ancient power. Think of yourself as being the center point of a cult ritual, you are the priest who is calling down Apollo and all the blazing glory of the Sun. The color is energy. You are energy. Ancient, mysterious energy. That's what you will tell them. Got it?”

“Roger. Ancient, mysterious energy. Cultist priest, Apollo, Rome, yadda yadda. Whatever you say, Sergio.” Ulrich took one last look at himself in the mirror, making sure his hair was in place. It was blonde for this season, which was at least a lot more palatable than the white or purple it had been before. The bright orange toga, which was cinched with a hemp cord flaked in real gold, was simultaneously the most hideous and most expensive thing he had ever worn. This would be probably the only time anyone would ever wear it, and this show wasn't even introducing a new fashion line. Sergio just liked to show off sometimes.

Ulrich had Sergio de Sica to thank for his success. Were it not for him, Ulrich would still be posing for stock photos and living in a basement apartment with six other people. Now, as Sergio and all the other designers who were clamoring to work with him told him frequently, he was the face of fashion in Berlin. Wearing ridiculous get-ups like these paid a lot more than posing for department store catalogs, and paid infinitely more than not having a job at all. He was almost famous now, which was what he had wanted, wasn't it?

Well, this wasn't hoisting the World Cup over his head and looking around to a stadium with hundreds of thousands of people, but it was a living. He took a deep breath, cinched the toga a little tighter, and strode out onto the catwalk.

Twenty four steps down, a pause, a turn, and twenty four steps back up. It was simple enough, and yet, at step eight, Ulrich's knee flared and he fell face first into the floor. He could hear the crowd gasp, but it was difficult over the increased frequency of cameras snapping. For perhaps half a second, he recalled how it had been to lie face first in the turf at his last football game. No, a voice told him from the back of his skull. Perhaps it had been someone actually saying it out loud, he wasn't sure. Regardless, he forced himself back up, took a look around the audience, and completed his circuit with blood pouring from his nose. When he got back behind the curtain, Sergio had a hand clasped over his mouth.

“Does this mean I get to skip the interviews?” Ulrich spluttered through the blood on his lips.

“Yes,” said Sergio with wide eyes. “It also means that your picture is definitely going to be on the front of the New York Times fashion section tomorrow.”

“I thought you said they weren't here!” Someone rushed up to Ulrich with a fistful of paper towel and shoved them in his face.

“I lied,” Sergio said. “Ulrich Stern, I can guarantee you, you've just earned a spot at Fashion Week.”

“If I had known getting injured on a catwalk would have improved my work options, I never would have played football at all,” he said with a bitter laugh.

-

Ulrich Stern, 26, was once a bench player on one of Germany's most unsuccessful football teams. Born in France, he did not even learn to speak German until he was 18 years old. After a catastrophic injury in a game – the first in which he had ever started – ended his football playing career five years ago, he turned to modeling and has since taken the Berlin fashion scene by storm. On Friday, notably Friday the 13^th, Stern fell while modeling at designer Sergio de Sica's fashion show “Rituals” and broke his nose. Despite the blood pouring down his face, Stern got up and finished his walk even more energized than before. De Sica, a noted avant-garde designer who has worked with Stern several times and who credits himself with introducing Stern to the fashion scene, said “Many designers want their clothes to do all the speaking on the runway, but I have always insisted that it is up to the model to build the foundation on which the clothing can be expressed. Ulrich is the epitome of a model who can find a way to express himself through the clothing, which in the end, is exactly how the relationship between people and fashion is supposed to work.”

Stern, who was unavailable for an interview, citing medical concerns through an agent …

Ulrich did not bother to read the rest of the article. Someone, maybe even Sergio himself, had stuffed the New York Times fashion section under his door and circled the first paragraph in bright red marker. The picture above it was indeed an image of Ulrich in full stride, with blood down his face and on the toga, all in full color. Behind him were several photographers with slacked jaws, and one with an expression of pure delight on his face. He had always thought journalists were a little bloodthirsty, but that was a bit much.

It was totally predictable that Sergio would take total credit for Ulrich's career. In reality, while Sergio had been the first major designer to invite Ulrich to a show, it was his appearance in a spread for PUMA sportswear that got the attention of the entire establishment. Not that he would ever tell Sergio that; Sergio paid better than pretty much anyone else and Ulrich was willing to put up with some bragging in order to stay in an apartment with no roommates.

His cell phone, which was sitting on the kitchen counter on the other side of the room, was buzzing again. It had been buzzing all morning, and it would continue to buzz. His agent knew not to contact him on Saturday before noon, so whoever was calling was calling him directly. Ulrich took Saturday mornings as a time of rest, and tried to do as little work on Saturday overall as possible. Even models deserved a little rest and he was in a position now to be able to be selective about when and with whom he worked. It was a luxury not many models ever got to know, so he was going to enjoy it as much as possible.

The dining room table was right in front of a big window, from which Ulrich could look down at the street below. He was on the seventh floor, which is why he was comfortable eating breakfast in his underwear. Of course, anyone who had purchased the June issue of Men's Health Germany had seen him in his underwear, but it was the principle of the thing. He had allowed himself a little sugar on his cereal this morning, which was a luxury not in that it was a dietary restriction at work but that his father had just been diagnosed with diabetes and he was trying to be careful. His mother had called the week before to give him the news, as she always did, because his father didn't like to call. She had seemed very concerned, but Ulrich found himself not too worried about him. Death himself could show up to his father's bedroom and he would just glare until Death got scared and left. His mother usually called around this time, but she hadn't yet. He wondered perhaps if she had been the one calling his phone earlier, but she knew not to call him on that number. He still had the old one that he kept for personal communication.

His mother wasn't altogether thrilled with his career choice, but she liked it a bit better than his previous one. His father had been continuously disappointed with him for well over a decade, so he didn't even bother to pay attention to what he felt. It was safe to presume he didn't like it either. Ulrich had long since given up attempting to please his parents, and it didn't really factor in to his decision making anymore. He just wished sometimes that he had something to talk to her about that she might actually like to hear. But he had long since given up on that, too.

It was unusually warm in his apartment, probably because it was unusually warm outside. It felt more like August than July, and it had felt like August in June and in May. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun, even in the morning, was bright and in full glory. He thought for a moment about Apollo and ancient mysterious power and laughed. Ulrich had always been more of a spring kind of guy, but as far as hot summer days went, this one looked pretty good.

It had been a day like this when he broke his knee, hot enough to be just slightly uncomfortable but not enough to stop him from enjoying himself. He had been named as a starter after Henrik had gotten arrested and getting the news had been like winning the lottery. Of course, his team had won all of two games the previous season, but he just knew that with him starting they would win them all.

That was, naturally, until a member of his own team collided with him so hard it pulverized his kneecap and broke his tibia clean in half. He could remember looking down and seeing the bone and thinking “Well, that's not supposed to be there.” It took a year of rehab for him to be able to walk at any speed faster than his grandmother could go. Also like his grandmother, he now had a metal knee. Even after five years it still didn't always feel quite right, as evidenced the previous night. Particularly humid days seemed to make it act strangely, as did days when it was especially cold. Ulrich was fairly unsatisfied with the bionic future, but he at least appreciated that he could walk.

Generally speaking, Ulrich was satisfied with life. He had a decent place to live, he was in control of his finances, and almost without exception he could dictate the terms of how his life proceeded. He didn't have to do any jobs he didn't feel like doing, he didn't have to deal with too many people he didn't like, and he found himself content with the balance of work and leisure in his life. Perhaps he was not truly thrilled with life, but who in their mid-twenties was? Whatever adjective was the most precise to use, the fact was that things had never been this good for him before. Not too many people who passed their baccalaureate by the skin of their teeth and never went to college had lives like this. He was free from the stress of constantly having to worry about grades and even the stress of game performance. All he had to do to stay in good graces at work was look good. And while he tried to stay modest, he knew he had that going for him.

Part of what kept him sane and regimented was working out every day. It wasn't quite an athlete's workout these days, especially on leg day, but it made his heart race and kept up his six pack and that was all he needed. After breakfast he normally liked to hit the gym, but his knee was still twinging so he allowed himself the indulgence of laying down on the couch to stretch out his leg. Even on the other end of the apartment from the kitchen, he could hear his phone still buzzing. “Keep trying,” Ulrich said to no one, “you're not going to get anywhere.” His personal cell phone sat next to him on the couch in case his mother wanted to call, but it was still silent. He could call her, he supposed, but if she was busy he didn't mind waiting.

He would wait, it turned out, all day. His mother did not call on Saturday, as she always did. When Ulrich finally called, he got her voicemail. “Hey mom, I was just calling to say hello, sorry if you're busy, call me when you can,” he said in his message. He had never left a message for his mother before, she always picked right up. Ulrich tried to calm himself by saying that if something were actually wrong, she would have already called. He could trust that no one was dead or dying. Still, he could not shake the intuition that something was happening that shouldn't have been. Ulrich Stern was not a man of intuition, he was always pretty dense about perceiving the intricacies of what was going on around him. For him to have a feeling like that was unusual, even foreboding.

Ulrich decided he would try his hardest not to give it any attention. Instead, he finally picked up his other phone.

“Jesus, Ulrich, I've been trying to call you all day!” His agent was frantic.

“And what day is today?”

“There are no weekends in modeling, Ulrich,” his agent snapped. “Not a week before Fashion Week. I have literally eighty people who want you to work for them.”

“Literally 80, Johan? Eighty different people?”

“Okay, seventeen. Exactly seventeen, with another four who expressed interest for the future.” Johan was speaking through gritted teeth, which was usual for him.

“Johan, my nose has been packed full of cotton all day and I look like I got in a fight. I'm obviously not doing any spreads any time soon. Put me on injured reserve.”

“There is no injured reserve when Berlin Fashion Week starts next Monday! You'll look fine by then and before then, well, injuries look sporty, we can do some sportswear stuff. You like that, don't you?” Johan was practically shouting now, which was his other primary mode of communication.

“Are there any people who are interested?”

“Adidas called, actually. They're doing a shoot on Tuesday and wondered if you could drop in. I think they said it was for their website, that could get you a lot of attention.”

“Alright, we can do that. That sounds legit. Anything else that you think is actually worth my time that I won't hate?”

Johan was silent, which was rare.

“Really? Only one out of seventeen?” Ulrich was sure to layer his voice with as much smugness as possible. “And you were calling me all day for this?”

“It's not my fault you're being so picky lately.” Johan was back to gritted teeth. “A few video studios called me wondering if you were into porn. I told them to call you directly for those, so that might have been all the calls.”

“You fucking asshole, you did not.”

“No, but that knocked you down a few pegs, didn't it? Kristoff Mueller called and asked if you would do his fall show, I said you didn't like to schedule that far out. Motorcar Enthusiast magazine wondered if you would do a spread, it would be you and a few Audis, I put you down as a maybe?”

“When is that?”

“Wednesday the 25^th.”

“I like Audi fine, we can do that. Is there anything else?”

“Uh, yeah, but not really work related. Someone named… uh, let me get the note… Jean-Pierre Delmas called for you. Said he was a former teacher? He left a number and said to call him as soon as you could. Not sure if it was a prank or not, he sounded old and kind of weird.”

Ulrich's feeling that something was wrong intensified. His stomach dropped and he wasn't sure what to say. “Uh, yeah, I know him… did he say why?”

“No, just that it was urgent. He said call him any time.” Johan gave him the number and Ulrich scrawled on the back of his hand. “Pick up the phone a little earlier tomorrow,” Johan said before he ended the call, but Ulrich wasn't really paying attention. Why was Mr. Delmas calling him? Why would he go through all the trouble of looking up his modeling agency? What, was there some Kadic reuniuon in the works? But why would that be urgent? Well, there was only one way to find out. He dialed the number.

“Hello? Who is this?” Mr. Delmas' voice was gruff, but not deep, and immediately recognizable. It almost made him feel like he was in trouble.

“This is Ulrich Stern, you wanted to talk to me?”

“Oh, Ulrich! Hello! I was hoping your agent would pass on the message. He says you're doing quite well for yourself! I'm glad to hear that, very glad.” Mr. Delmas's voice immediately lightened, as if a switch had been flipped.

“Uh, thank you, sir. What, uh, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I was wondering if you'd had any contact with Jeremie Belpois or Aelita Stones recently.” His voice was still light and chipper, but something about the way he was breathing put Ulrich on edge. He hadn't spoken with either one of them since their wedding, although they were friends on Facebook. They were living in London, as he recalled.

“No, not for quite some time. Not directly anyway. Is… something wrong?”

“No,” Mr. Delmas said very quickly. “Well… I should say, we don't think so. Are you… are you familiar with Jeremie's, ah, troubles?”

Jeremie had been arrested twice for hacking. The first time was a relatively minor charge, Aelita had told him then, something about attempting but not succeeding to gain access to unclassified military systems. He had served a little time in jail the first time, 30 days or something. That had been while he was still playing football, not too long after he had moved. Maybe a year? But the second time was a much bigger deal. Aelita had called him on the phone then, rather than just messaging over Facebook. She had been frantic, in tears, almost inconsolable. Apparently almost all through their time in college, Jeremie had been creating false identities in order to be able to hack into all kinds of places, even giving himself military security clearance. He had forged passports and birth certificates, credit cards, the whole nine yards. He had done that at Kadic, of course, but just enough to enroll Aelita. Now he was doing it serially, and apparently it had consumed his entire life. “He hacked the Americans and they want to extradite,” he remembered Aelita saying. “They're gonna kill him!”

Jeremie had spent four months in a high-security facility but eventually took a plea deal. Ulrich didn't remember the specifics but it came with a hefty fine and something about agreeing to give all his information on security vulnerabilities to the government. They had refused to extradite him because of the American death penalty, which had caused a minor diplomatic stir. Almost immediately after, Aelita and Jeremie married and left the country. Ulrich had been the only one from Kadic who was able to make the wedding. All said and done, Jeremie got off pretty lightly. As far as he knew, Jeremie was on the straight and narrow now. They had trusted him enough to let him work at a stock exchange, after all.

“Uh, not anything… recent, no,” Ulrich said. “Look, is something wrong or not?”

Mr. Delmas sighed, and it came out like a rush of static through the phone. “I'm sorry to worry you. It's just… you… might be contacted by him soon. He's been contacting people from Kadic and making… strange requests. He may try to give you the impression that what he needs to tell you is very secret. We and his family are all worried, but we aren't sure what's going on. So if you are contacted by him, if you could let me know… I can't tell you how appreciative I would be. We all would be.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Ulrich said.

“Thank you, Ulrich. Again, I'm sorry to have bothered you. Be well.” Mr. Delmas disconnected the call, leaving Ulrich to ruminate silently on what he had just heard. There was only one secret Jeremie kept that had anything to do with Kadic. It made Ulrich even more unsettled to even think about it. But then, it wasn't like Jeremie to be so… chaotic. To suddenly reach out to anyone at all for things like this. If there were anything wrong, Ulrich certainly would have already heard about it. Even if they didn't talk much anymore, he liked to think he would still be high on Jeremie's list of people to ask for help.

Ulrich shoved his concerns to the back of his head and resolved to go to bed early that night. His phone, at about 11:30 that night, had other ideas.

“S.O.S. XANA,” it said.

Ulrich squinted. His mind felt foggy, like after taking a nap for too long, or like waking up with a hangover. It took some time before his brain could process the words in front of him as if they were real. There they were, in black and white, glowing right in front of his face. S.O.S. XANA. The sender was Jeremie Belpois.

He leaned up to try and get a better look, but he bent his knee the wrong way and it twinged.

“I'm not a warrior anymore,” he said, throwing his phone to the floor. Ulrich went back to sleep and did not pick his phone back up in the morning. For the first time, he had a life that wasn't worth throwing away anymore. He wasn't going to.

He felt no guilt stepping over his phone in the morning. He felt no guilt stepping over it again to go back to bed that night. The next morning, he didn't even notice it at all.

-

It was Tuesday when his mother finally called. Ulrich was just outside the building where he was slated to do the shoot for Adidas. He didn't even know his mother had his work phone number, but apparently she did. “Hello?”

“Hi, Ulrich. I'm sorry I didn't call on Saturday,” she said. “I'm sure you've been worried sick.”

“No, it's okay, I figured you were busy,” Ulrich said. “How'd you get my work number? You didn't have to talk to Johan, did you?”

“Your agent? He seems like he's stressed. You should be kinder to him.” His mother was chiding him, but gently, as she always did. “Are you eating well?”

His mother asked him how he was eating every time they spoke. She sent him every picture of him they took, every time, just to prove he wasn't malnourished. But she asked anyway, every single time. “Yes, mother,” he said almost mechanically.

“Your agent said you were about to have an appointment, so I won't keep you, I just wanted to apologize for not calling earlier. And to say that, uh, I might not be calling again next week.”

“Why? What's up? Is dad sick? You can tell me if he's sick.”

“Your father is fine.” His mother's voice was small now. “I'm fine. No one is sick. But something has come up and your father and I are going to be… busy. But I just want you to know that it's not because we don't want to talk to you, or that we don't love you. We do. We love you very much, even your father. We're, uh, we're going… on a… on a trip, and-” She choked. It made Ulrich nauseous to hear his mother cry, and it made him even sicker to think that whatever was happening, it had something to do with Mr. Delmas and Jeremie. He knew it did. There was no way it didn't. “I… I have to go. I won't be able to pick up if you call me. Please remember, Ulrich, that I love you, and that I always will.”

The call ended.

He called back, his heart racing, but his mother did not pick up. He called his father, and his phone was not even on. He even called his grandmother, but she didn't pick up either. Ulrich had no idea what was happening. He had no idea what Jean-Pierre Delmas had to do with his parents or what this all even really meant, but he didn't have to.

He did not even look back at the door he was supposed to be entering as he walked away. He did not text his agent. He did not follow the speed limit as he floored it all the way home. He did not speak to anyone he passed on the stairs. He did not pay attention to his knee complaining from the stress. He did not bother to close his apartment door behind him. And after he packed his bag, he did not take his work phone with him. He picked up his personal phone, with the number he had carried with him from France, and threw it atop his underwear. And as he practically ran back down the stairs, all seven stories, he thought to himself that maybe he was still a warrior after all.

It was noon when he landed in Paris. He had no idea where to go, or even how he would have gotten there if he did. It had been years since he had lived here, and he had stuck close to school all that time. In fact, he had never even been to Charles de Gaulle before. He dug his phone out of his pocket and called Jeremie, who did not answer. For a moment, he felt paranoid, as if someone was blocking his phone calls from going through.

“Well, if it's XANA we're worried about, there's only one place to go,” Ulrich muttered to himself.

The cab driver had stared blankly when Ulrich told him to drive to Île Seguin. “Uh, just… drive to Boulogne and I'll get you there,” he said. It was a long, expensive drive, but Ulrich would have paid the driver anything to never have to see him look at him so strangely again. Of course, he was getting out of a cab on a closed bridge to a factory that had been abandoned for decades. Still, Ulrich didn't need the judgment. He felt weird enough as it was.

There was someone sitting at the other end of the bridge. When they saw Ulrich get out of the cab, they started walking up, but even as they got closer, Ulrich could not recognize who it was. It was a man, Ulrich thought, very skinny and on the shorter side. He was wearing a tank top striped like the French Tricolor and neon orange shorts (“Neon is in!” Sergio said in Ulrich's head), both of which clashed spectacularly with his neat and staunchly conservative brown boat shoes. He had brown hair down to his shoulders and was wearing thick-rimmed glasses, but there was only one person Ulrich Stern knew who dressed so preposterously. “...Odd?”

Odd – at least, he was pretty sure it was Odd – blinked. “Uh, yes? Who are...” Odd looked him up and down, lifting up his glasses and squinting his eyes. “Ul...rich?”

“Yeah,” said Ulrich with a slow grin spreading across his face. “Yeah. You, uh, dyed your hair.”

“So did you! And you're fucking ripped!” Odd's face turned pink, and Ulrich could feel that his had, too. “You could be a model!”

“Well, uh, as it so happens, I am a model.” The burning of Ulrich's face only intensified. He had never really been embarrassed about it before, but here he was, blushing like a schoolgirl.

Odd squinted again. “Okay, who the hell are you? The Ulrich Stern I know would never be a model. Or at least never admit to it.”

Ulrich raised his pant leg to reveal the scar on his knee. “There are only so many things someone who didn't go to college and can't play football anymore can do,” he said plainly. “Now that I'm finally free from caring how disappointed my father is, I've got a whole new lease on-” Ulrich was interrupted by Odd throwing his arms around him and squeezing tightly.

“I've missed you,” Odd said into Ulrich's chest. “It's good to see you again.”

Ulrich closed his arms around his old friend, although not before flailing for a moment. “It's good to see you too, man. But, uh, where is everyone else?”

Odd ripped away from Ulrich so quickly he stumbled. “You don't know either? Fuck ! I got here two days ago but I lost my phone and I have no idea where anyone is! I've spent pretty much all my time just sitting out here because, hey, when I get a text that says S.O.S. XANA, where the hell else am I supposed to go? No one has even come close. You're the first human I've seen up close since Sunday.”

“Have you tried going into the lab?”

“I can't remember the damn elevator passcode,” Odd said.

“It's, uh… it's… shit,” Ulrich said. “I guess I don't remember either. Anyway, I tried calling Jeremie earlier but he didn't answer. I don't suppose you know anything about what's happening?”

Odd shook his head. “I've been here two days and nothing out of the ordinary has happened, so I don't know what the crisis is. Everything here is pretty much exactly the way it was before, except dustier.”

“You didn't… sleep here, did you?”

“Nah, I've got a hotel room. And I bought a DS and I've been playing Pokemon pretty much this whole time.” Odd pulled a purple Nintendo DS out of his pocket. “You know, I wonder if Jeremie still has that Game Boy we used that one time to save him from the Supercomputer.”

Ulrich pulled out his phone and called Aelita this time. She was probably a little more responsible with her phone. He guessed right – Aelita picked up after half a ring. “Hey,” Ulrich said. “I'm uh… I'm here. I have Odd with me.”

“Where are you? Charles de Gaulle or Orly?”

“Uh, the Factory,” Ulrich replied.

“Fuck!” Aelita shouted so loudly Ulrich had to pull the phone away from his ear. “Get out of there! You have to get out of there! It's not safe, you have to-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there's no one here! It's just me and Odd, he says there hasn't-”

“You. Need. To. Get. Out.” Aelita could rival Johan with the way she spoke through her teeth. Immediately Ulrich started running, and Odd got the hint and started running too. It was not long, however, before Ulrich's knee gave out and he stumbled to the ground, almost completing a full somersault. So quickly it had to have been without thinking, Odd grabbed Ulrich and yanked him off the ground, grabbing him around his middle and continuing to run.

It felt like hot knives were being jammed up Ulrich's thigh. “Aelita… fuck , I'll explain when I see you – ouch – but I can't – shit – really run anymore.” Ulrich's right knee buckled with each step, but somehow Odd's scrawny frame was keeping him upright. But when he stopped running it was Odd who fell then, collapsing to the ground in a fit of wheezing breaths. “Odd can't either,” he added as he offered an arm for Odd to grab and pull himself up on. Odd took it and leaned on Ulrich, still heaving.

Aelita took a deep breath. “Alright. Can you make it to Yumi's house? We're all here. Try to… take a long way. Don't take the sewers, take the Metro around a while and then come back.”

“Okay,” Ulrich said, massaging his knee. “I'll call you when I'm close.”

“Alright. And Ulrich? It's… good to hear your voice.”

“You too, Princess.” With a smile on his face, he ended the call. “Alright, Odd, think you can walk?”

“You might have to carry me,” Odd whined.

Ulrich looked down at his friend, whose face was buried in his shoulder. The hair was different, and the glasses were inexplicable, but that was definitely Odd Della Robbia. He patted Odd on the back and held his hand there for a moment, waiting for his breathing to regulate. “We've gotten old,” he said.

“We're like 26,” Odd said.

“Neither of us can run anymore, and at least while we're both standing I can probably only lift as much as you can. The muscles are just for show, really,” Ulrich said. “All we have left is our conviction.” He took a deep breath. “What do you say, old friend? Should we go be heroes again?”

Odd did not hesitate. “Hell yeah,” he said. “And hey, how much do you want to bet Yumi won't be able to speak once she sees you?”

Ulrich glared down at Odd, but felt himself slowly smiling. “Twenty euro.”

The two burst into laughter and did not stop until they were already at the Metro station.

Chapter Text

PART I: ALL WE'VE GOT
CHAPTER V: YUMI

“Hi, Christophe, this is Yumi Ishiyama,” said Yumi as she stared at her ceiling. “I'm sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering if you had heard from William Dunbar recently?”

No, of course he hadn't. No one had. She had lost count of how many calls she had made, and they had all been the exact same.

“Oh, we're just trying to hunt him down… for old time's sake. Yeah, no one else has heard from him either. Yeah, let me know. Thanks.”

The call ended, and Yumi crossed another name off her list. Christophe M'Bala had been the last person in her grade she had called. He had also been one of the only ones to actually pick up the phone; mostly she had gotten voicemails. Paul Gaillard had actually hung up on her. On the other hand, Emily Leduc had talked for an hour straight, which was about as enjoyable. Although, it had been nice to think for a moment about things other than… well, pretty much everything in her entire life at the moment.

Aelita, Jeremie, and Elisabeth, were due to arrive at any time. They were staying in an apartment belonging to Elisabeth's cousin who was currently staying in Russia for some business project. Or maybe he was a diplomat, Yumi hadn't really been paying attention. Either way, it was on the other end of the city and they were hopping on a bunch of different trains to avoid detection, so she wasn't expecting them for a little while longer. Ulrich and Odd still hadn't shown, and she was beginning to think they wouldn't. She thought for a moment about her mother, who practically hadn't left her bedroom except for doctor's appointments in eight months, and wondered for a moment if she shouldn't have answered either.

Of course, her mother had been telling her to get out more. This was certainly one way to do it.

It was eleven in the morning and she still had not heard her mother getting up and around, so Yumi figured she ought to get up and check on her. Her mother had always been an early riser, which had always annoyed her father, but recently she had been doing a lot more sleeping. Out of almost everything else, that was what bothered Yumi the most. Doing the cooking and the cleaning didn't bother her, and driving to and from the doctor's gave her something to do, but seeing her mother so tired all the time, that was more difficult than anything she had ever dealt with. That included the events at Kadic, and the events that were happening now. Fighting monsters was easy. Tending to the bedside of the strongest woman she had ever known was an impossible struggle, every day.

Yumi peeked into her mother's bedroom. Her mother was still laying in bed with the covers to her chin. A fan whispered quietly, shaking the blinds with its breeze. The thin lines of light cast through the gaps in the blinds shook, providing the only movement in the room. Yumi stepped forward gingerly, and as she got closer she could see her mother's chest moving up and down. On her mother's chest was a book, rested neatly and with care, as if she had set it down just to shut her eyes for a moment. And on the bedside was an empty glass where her mother liked to keep water. Resolving that her mother must have woken up earlier and just taken a nap, Yumi grabbed the glass and went to the bathroom to refill it.

It was strange to see the master bathroom. It had always been for her parents only, leaving her and Hiroki to fight over the other one, which they had done quite frequently. Even though she had been in it several times in the past months, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was in a place she wasn't supposed to be. There were still hand towels embroidered with A and T, for Akiko and Takeo, despite the fact that they had been divorced for years. Her mother didn't use them anymore, and probably never had; they looked like the kind of towels that were only for decoration. The master bathroom had his-and-hers sinks, and Yumi noted that the one on the far left, her “father's,” was dusty and uncleaned. Her mother still insisted on using “her” sink after all this time. Although it was also the one closer to the door, so maybe it was just convenient. And when Yumi went to turn on the faucet, she noted that her mother's sink wasn't really that much cleaner. In fact, the whole bathroom was pretty much a mess. There were empty toilet paper rolls scattered on the floor, the toilet bowl needed scrubbing, and the mirror was a mess. The state of the place probably bothered her mother to no end, but of course she wouldn't ever say anything. Yumi filled the glass and made a note to clean it more often. When she returned, her mother was sitting up.

“What's the deal with that bathroom, mom? You need to fire the cleaning lady.” Yumi smirked as she set her mother's glass back on the nightstand.

“Oh, she cooks pretty well, I think I'll keep her around.” Her mother offered a small smile. “You know, I woke up at five this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I found this old book, I think it's yours. It's Shakespeare.”

“I didn't know you liked Shakespeare,” Yumi said.

“Well he's not my favorite, but it's something to try. This one is fun enough.” The cover said As You Like It, which Yumi vaguely recalled having been assigned once. She had probably just looked it up online and written the paper that way, which is what she had done with most reading assignments at Kadic. “Would you mind bringing up some breakfast? I'm not feeling terribly well, maybe just some okayu.”

“Do you want it with eggs?”

Her mother thought for a moment, breathing deeply through her nose. “No, thank you,” she said finally. “I might be asleep again when you bring it up, it's okay to wake me. Heaven knows I've been sleeping enough.” She offered another small smile. Yumi forced herself to return one before turning and going down to the kitchen.

Making breakfast was easy because Yumi could do it all from muscle memory at this point. Okayu, which was basically rice porridge, was what her mother had had for breakfast yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. It was the quintessential Japanese food for when you were sick, as Yumi and her brother could attest to. It was the only thing their mother ever made for them when they took the days off from school because they were sick – which had been something of a deterrent from faking, because Yumi wasn't fond of it. To think of having it as a meal every day for weeks made Yumi feel sick herself. As she stared at the counter ticking down on the rice cooker, she could feel her stomach dropping further and further. It had been eight months with almost no progress, and with no answers. How much longer would she be making okayu for her mother?

Yumi placed her hands on her cheeks and slid them down. Thoughts like that wouldn't solve anything, and they weren't healthy for anyone. Her mother had given everything to raise her; she would give everything to help her mother. That was how it worked, and she was proud to do it. Besides, free rent in Paris was pretty hard to beat.

Her mother was indeed asleep when Yumi returned to her bedroom with the okayu on a tray, alongside some tea and a flower picked from the garden. Yumi had gotten pretty good at remembering to water them. She gently jostled her mother to wake her up, then left her to eat. She had found that her mother preferred to be alone most of the time, perhaps because she was embarrassed to be a “burden,” or perhaps just because she had a lot on her mind. Probably both, Yumi imagined. Yumi herself generally preferred being alone, but it did feel strange to spend so much time alone in her childhood home. There had always been Hiroki buzzing around being a pain, or her father snoring or eating something loudly or watching some ridiculous TV show. But now it was just her. After eight months it still felt strange, and it probably always would.

Hiroki had promised to visit whenever he could, but he still hadn't made it. Yumi didn't blame him, he was off at university and, as she recalled, not doing altogether well. Their mother would certainly admonish him to focus on his studies over her. He did send money, though, which was helpful. Even her father sent money, and small notes telling her and her mother what he was up to. He was on wife number three, as she recalled, though he conveniently left out those kinds of details in his notes. Her mother was probably thankful for that, and to be honest, so was Yumi. She was not in want of anything, really. The house was paid for, the bills and the groceries were manageable because it was just two of them, and it wasn't like there wasn't anything to do – she lived in Paris, after all. Still, when Yumi flopped onto the couch, she felt like she had no strength. As if all her energy had been sapped from her. She felt like this a majority of the time she was home, and it was just another thing she couldn't get used to.

A small, perverse part of her was almost thankful this Carthage business had come back.

Someone tapped on Yumi's shoulder and she snapped up, looking around wildly. Elisabeth was standing in front of her, accompanied by Aelita and a tall man with short, gelled-up blonde hair that she only remembered was Jeremie after she had shaken her head to cast the last vestiges of sleep out of it. She hadn't even realized she had fallen asleep. “What time is it?”

“About a quarter to one,” Elisabeth said.

“Hang on, lemme… lemme check on my mom real quick,” Yumi yawned. She lumbered back up the stairs and peeked into her mother's bedroom; she was reading her book, with the meal tray shoved to the side.

“Oh, I thought you left, I heard the door,” she said.

“No, Elisabeth is here. And Jeremie and Aelita,” said Yumi, walking over and picking up the tray. There was a good amount of okayu still in the bowl, but she knew her mother wouldn't want any more of it.

“Jeremie? And Aelita? Oh, how long has it been? Tell them I say hello. How long are they here?”

“Oh...” Yumi held the word like it was a note in a song, drawing it out until she could think of an answer. “They're visiting for a little while,” Yumi said finally.

“Well I hope they stop by again later when I'm feeling a little stronger, I'd love to see them.”

“I'm sure we can arrange that,” Yumi said with a smile. But her mother had already returned to her book.

The dishes on the tray clattered as she walked down the stairs, and suddenly Yumi felt conspicuous, as if she was breaking some kind of pregnant silence. She walked straight to the kitchen to put the dishes in the sink and spent several extra moments taking the time to rinse and scrub everything before returning to the living room. Jeremie and Aelita were looking around; Aelita at pictures on the wall and Jeremie at the television. “Is this the same one you had when I was here last? I'm amazed it still works.”

“This place hasn't changed much,” Yumi said. “All my mother watches are talk shows, you don't need the latest whatever display for that.”

“What's your brother up to?” Aelita was looking at a picture of Hiroki on the wall, who she probably hadn't seen since Kadic. That one had been taken when he had gotten his baccalaureate, holding a certificate and grinning widely. Even that picture was years old; Yumi hadn't actually seen him recently either.

“He goes to a university in Nice. He went there for the weather.” She laughed. “He was in engineering, but I think he, ah...” She paused. “I'm not sure he...” Yumi grinned. “We'll find out what his degree is in when he gets it.”

“So, when you moved back to Japan, did Hiroki stay here?” Aelita was still looking at the pictures on the wall, which Yumi suddenly realized were almost all of Hiroki.

“Yeah,” Yumi said. “I had already finished school so I decided to go to Japan with my dad, but Hiroki wanted to stay and finish here. I took a few classes at a university in Japan but just ended up sort of floating around.”

Aelita finally turned to face Yumi and her expression was hard to read, but seemed to be pained. “Have you… heard from him, recently? Did you hear from him regularly while you were away?”

It dawned quickly on Yumi what Aelita was getting at. “He wasn't the most regular correspondent, no, but I heard from him every now and then. Usually on Facebook or whatever. He's been better since my mother got sick, though. He Skypes with her every now and again. I… haven't noticed anything unusual, and I don't think my mother has either. She would say something if she were concerned about Hiroki.”

“Good,” Aelita said as she sat on the couch. “Keep in touch with him. But… perhaps it would be best to encourage him not to visit for the time being.”

Yumi sighed deeply. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Have you made any calls, Yumi?” Jeremie was sitting on the couch with his hands resting on his legs, tapping up and down.

“Yeah, I called pretty much everyone in mine and William's year, plus a few people in yours. No one has heard a thing that I spoke to, but I left a lot of messages so maybe I'll hear back. Not that William was particularly close to any of them, really. Emily Leduc said she had tried to connect with him online once, a year or so after Kadic, but he never responded,” Yumi said.

“Emily? How is she doing? Did she express any hesitance to speak with you?”

“On the contrary, she spoke pretty much nonstop for an hour,” Yumi groaned. “She's doing well for herself, though. Didn't seem to be concerned about a thing.”

“Well, that tells us two things. One, our timeline seems to indicate that William fell off the face of the Earth about a year after we shut down the Supercomputer, at least as far as we know so far. And two, Project Carthage isn't targeting everyone that we knew at Kadic, only certain people, possibly only teachers and staff.” Aelita was leaning forward, her brows furrowed in concentration.

“I visited a couple offices this morning, looking for records on William. None of them had any William Dunbars on file. But none of these records are online and each arrondissement keeps its own records that aren't linked to any other, so there's over a dozen more places I'll have to physically visit. And I called Breteuil Academy as well, but they wouldn't release any information to me because I wasn't William or his parent or guardian,” Jeremie said.

“Yolande Perraudin is on a leave of absence,” Elisabeth said. “I went to find her this morning but her boss says he has no idea when she'll be back. It was very sudden, and it was effective today. So I think she's very scared, and I think there's pressure on her from somewhere.”

“Are you able to look up her address or a phone number?”

“Definitely not an address, but maybe a phone number. She's a doctor, so she has to be available to be on call. She works in general care… if I had a patient who had her as their general practitioner, I could probably get her office to give me her phone number to call her, but even then, it would be against ethics rules to use that information for anything other than urgent patient needs.” Elisabeth frowned. “I'll admit, I don't really have much… freedom to work with. Rules are strict in medicine. And I've probably already used all my favors just getting off shifts in the past few days.”

“To be honest, I didn't expect her to say much,” said Jeremie. “Don't hound her, she's probably terrified. But did you say before that you had contact with Jim?”

“Not regularly, but I can if I need to,” Elisabeth said. “I mean, he's worked with my father for decades, he's practically an uncle at this point. He might know where some other teachers are.”

“Elisabeth… there is something you might want to consider about Jim...” Aelita said, with the same pained expression on her face as when she had asked Yumi about Hiroki.

“Jim isn't some kind of plant,” Elisabeth hissed. “He wouldn't be. He just… I mean he's Jim.”

“We can't take anything for granted,” Aelita said softly.

“I trust him.” Elisabeth was firm.

Aelita had opened her mouth as if to say something, but at that moment her phone rang. “It's Ulrich,” she said, looking at the screen. Her eyebrows were raised. “Hello?” There was a brief silence as Aelita listened. “Where are you? Charles de Gaulle or Orly?” Another brief pause, and then Aelita shouted “Fuck!” Everyone in the room jumped. “Get out of there! You have to get out of there! It's not safe, you have to-”

“He's at the Factory,” Jeremie muttered. “Shit.”

“You. Need. To. Get. Out.” Aelita's teeth were clenched, and her free hand was balled into a fist. Very distantly, the sound of Ulrich screaming and a rush of static could be heard, and everyone leaned in closer to the phone.

“Did… did something just happen?” Elisabeth's voice was hushed.

“Is he hurt?” Yumi was standing now, her fists clenched as well.

Aelita, who had her phone pressed as hard to her ear as she could, sighed with relief at the sound of Ulrich's voice. “Alright. Can you make it to Yumi's house? We're all here. Try to… take a long way. Don't take the sewers, take the Metro around a while and then come back.” She smiled. “And Ulrich? It's good to hear your voice.”

“What happened? What's going on?” Yumi had not relaxed as Aelita had.

“He fell, I think. He says he can't run anymore. But he has Odd with him, they're on their way from the Factory. He said Odd has been there for a few days and hasn't seen anyone, but-”

“Odd has been there for days?!” Jeremie lurched so violently his glasses fell from his face. “Christ! And why didn't he call?”

Aelita held up her hands. “I don't know, but we'll find out soon. Take a deep breath. I mean, in their defense, going to the Factory after an 'SOS XANA' text is kind of an impulse.”

Jeremie pinched the bridge of his nose as he took several deep breaths. “Right. Right.”

Yumi flopped back down onto the sofa. “Hey. Who wants to bet twenty euro Ulrich won't be able to speak when he sees me? Or Elisabeth, for that matter.”

The room was filled with so much laughter, it was hard to imagine any of them had ever been apart.

–

There were two men standing in the door frame of the Ishiyama household. One was shorter and so skinny he looked like he might fall over in a strong breeze, with long brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses. The other was taller and much more muscular, with blonde hair done in an undercut and a jawline that could cut glass. His shirt was athletic in nature, slim-fitting and adorned with a logo that probably belonged to a football team, and his shorts were an old pair of cargo shorts that covered his knees but not his conspicuously toned calves. His nose appeared to be broken. Logic dictated that these men had to be Odd Della Robbia and Ulrich Stern, respectively, but no one in the room could bring themselves to believe it.

The room was silent as a tomb. Ulrich, not as tall as Jeremie but somehow blonder, stared forward. In the room before him, sitting next to each other as casually as could be, were Yumi Ishiyama and Sissi Delmas. Sissi was wearing maroon surgical scrubs for some reason, whereas Yumi was still in all black and slowly, but surely, breaking into her wry smirk. From the pocket on her shirt, Sissi pulled out a twenty euro bill and handed it to Yumi. Suddenly, Ulrich realized that his face was burning. But then, so was Yumi's.

Odd stepped forward and slapped twenty euros into Ulrich's chest. “Okay, we got that out of the way. Now, uh, Jeremie, I'm going to need to know why I had to pay for international texting to be told that XANA was attacking, only to bring my ass all the way here and there hasn't even been so much as a cloud in the sky for three days. What, is XANA behind the hot weather?”

“Project Carthage is back,” Jeremie said simply. “They want to rebuild XANA to use as a weapon of war. They've gotten to every single teacher and staff member at Kadic. They've taken Jean-Pierre Delmas. They've gotten to my parents. Have you heard from yours lately?”

“I… I haven't, uh, spoken with-” Odd trailed off and stared at his feet.

“They've gotten to mine,” Ulrich said. “My mother called me this morning… said she wouldn't be talking to me for a while, that something had happened… she wouldn't say what. Why are they targeting them? Do we know?”

“We aren't certain,” Aelita said. “As far as our families, they probably wanted to lure us back here, and probably cut our support networks out from under us. The teachers, well… we can only make guesses. But we think they might be targets because they have at several points been possessed by XANA. Project Carthage needs to examine the brains of people who have been possessed in order to reverse-engineer the patterns XANA left behind into a base for recreating his artificial intelligence.”

“Which leads us to the most important concern,” Jeremie said. “We believe that their primary target is William, who has been unheard from for several years. If they find him, and gain access to the Supercomputer, it will be a near-certainty that they will be able to recreate XANA. Have either of you heard from William?”

Odd and Ulrich shook their heads. “He never spoke to me after he graduated,” Ulrich said. Odd nodded in agreement.

“So that's what we're doing. We're looking for William. I've been going around Paris looking at vital records, perhaps one of you can join me. Aelita is going to check with the police.”

“I think I'm going to pay a visit to Jim,” Elisabeth said. “I think you two should join me. Power in numbers, yeah?” She nodded at Ulrich and Odd, who nodded back.

“This isn't exactly what I expected,” Odd said. “Shooting arrows is easy, but this is… this is different.”

“It isn't a game anymore,” Yumi said, standing up. “This is real life, and there are real people out there who are after us. We're older and we're out of practice, but we're warriors through and through. So we're just going to to have to… get up and do it. There isn't anyone else who can.”

The room was silent. But everyone stood up slowly and looked around, into the faces of their friends. They were afraid, but not one of them wavered. Slowly, but surely, the fear in their faces hardened into resolve. The men and women once known as the Lyoko Warriors gathered together in a circle and without any one person starting, linked their hands together. “We're all afraid,” Aelita said, “but we can do this. Together.”

“Come on guys, if we could do all this in middle school, we can do it now.” Odd laughed, but he squeezed Ulrich's and Elisabeth's hands a bit tighter.

“We don't know what the world out there is going to be like. We don't know what they know, we don't know where they're watching, and they're several steps ahead of us,” Jeremie said. “But regardless of anything, there are six things they don't have, and I'm looking at them. Now let's get out there and save the world, one last time.” The steeled resolve on the faces of the Lyoko Warriors morphed into smiles.

“Yumi, come with me, we'll keep on looking at public records. Odd and Ulrich, go ahead with Elisabeth and pay a visit to ol' Jimbo. Aelita, you've got the police. We'll meet up at the apartment afterward,” Jeremie said. He looked around at the room one last time, his gaze lingering for just a moment at Odd and Ulrich. “We obviously have some catching up to do, after all this.”

“Looking forward to it,” Ulrich said. “But we've gotta save the world first.”

–

“So are we really going to visit all 20 arrondissements?” Yumi had her head laying back on the train window.

“We're already halfway done,” Jeremie said. “And we don't have to do all of them today, but eventually, yes. As well as the offices of the major suburbs.”

“It's 2018, I don't see why these records can't all be digital or at least kept in one place. Aelita has the easy job, she can just go to police headquarters.”

Jeremie laughed. “Well, I guess old habits just die hard. But this is our stop.” Jeremie stood up and tugged gently at Yumi's sleeve until she got up to follow him.

“Odd was right,” Yumi said as they walked up the stairs to the street. “Throwing fans at the bad guys was easy. This is something else entirely.” She hadn't done this much walking in months, and her feet were threatening to fall off, it seemed. She felt herself out of breath at the top of the stairs – had she really gotten so out of shape? And to top it all off, she was sweating in her black, long-sleeved shirt. Her hair, which was beyond overdue for a haircut, was sticking to her sweaty, almost certainly flushed red face. She looked down as she walked into the offices of the 20^th arrondissement, as to not see her reflection in the windows.

This was the sixth administrative office she had visited today, and she wasted no time finding the lobby and planting her bottom firmly on the nearest chair. It was identical to the kinds of chairs in the 11^th , and the 12^th , and the 13^th , and the 4^th , and all the others that were all the goddamn same. Why Paris insisted on dividing itself into all these tiny little pieces, Yumi did not know, but she was of a mind to run for Mayor and abolish the lot of them. She watched as Jeremie went up to the desk and asked the same exact question he had asked every other clerk: “I'm looking for death records between 2006 and 2018 for someone by the name of William Dunbar.” That clerk would then tap a few times on their keyboard, then pull up some files and motion to a nearby computer where the records would be pulled up to view. Jeremie would then ask if she could look at the same files on the second computer, and the clerk would nod, and then Jeremie would motion for her to come up. All of this happened right on schedule, just as it had for the previous three hours.

“What a surprise, no exact matches,” Yumi muttered. “Just like the previous ten thousand times.”

“Wait.” Jeremie's voice was suddenly solemn. “There's a record of a 'Guillaume Barre' here that died in 2016, that could have been an alias, or a typo from someone who misunderstood William's name.”

Yumi looked over at Jeremie's monitor. “What's it say?”

“Cause of death was… stroke?” Jeremie tapped a few more keys. “Oh. There's a record here of a power of attorney filing for Guillaume Barre in 2005. I guess he had been sick a while.”

“Since when we met actual William,” Yumi said. “So he's out. But that sure was exciting for thirty seconds.”

“Keep looking,” Jeremie said. “It works best when we have two sets of eyes to look at all this data.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Yumi said, turning back to her monitor. Just as there had been no William Dunbars born or dead in the previous offices, there had been none here. Nor Guillaume Dunbars, or Dunbarres, or anything similar. She also looked up Ulrich Stern, Odd Della Robbia, and all the names of male Kadic classmates she could think of, in case William had used them as aliases. Nothing. Again.

“I'm not seeing anything relevant,” Jeremie sighed.

“Me either. Although I did just find a Thomas Jolivet born in 1959. Maybe he was our Thomas' father. Or maybe the one we knew was a time traveler. Stranger things have happened,” Yumi said.

“We'll keep that on the back burner,” Jeremie said. “Hey, do you wanna stop for a minute and get something to eat? There's a McDonald's across the street.” Yumi hated McDonald's, it was greasy and cheap, but suddenly she was famished.

“Sure,” Yumi said. “Anything is better than being in another government office.”

Yumi ordered a small fry and “the largest Coca-Cola you are legally allowed to sell.” Jeremie ordered some kind of salad, which made Yumi feel fantastic. Two sips into the Coke, however, and she couldn't care less. They sat down across from each other in the booth farthest from any of the other customers. “Jeremie, do you really think we're going to find anything in the rest of Paris?”

“To be realistic, no, probably not, but we can't risk missing even just one opportunity. The trail is stone cold.”

“What do you even expect to find?” She fiddled with her straw as she stared down at the table. “I mean… I know I've been complaining all day, I just… I don't know, I feel like this is a waste of time.”

Jeremie sighed. “It probably will end up being just that,” he admitted. “But like I said, we can't risk losing that one chance, if it's out there.”

“We're not built to be private investigators,” Yumi said. “Wait. Why don't we just hire a private investigator?”

Jeremie shrugged. “Actually, that's not a half-bad idea. I'll look into that. Still, we might as well keep looking at what we can.”

They were silent for a long time. The sounds of lettuce being stabbed or ice being stirred broke the quiet every now and then. On the other side of a restaurant, a child cried because the ice cream machine was broken. Cars drove past, one every now and then blaring loud music. The lighting inside was the fluorescent, sterile kind of white that reminded Yumi of a doctor's office. Suddenly she wasn't hungry anymore. Outside, the sun was still bright, almost harsh, and it glinted off the windshields of parked cars and made it hurt to look out the window. Yumi returned to staring at the table. “This doesn't feel like last time,” she said finally.

“What do you mean?”

“Last time.. when we were fighting you-know-what, it was… it felt righteous. We were powerful, and pretty much always managed to be smarter and better. It was an adventure. We were sneaking around, we had this secret, we had all this cool technology, it wasn't like anything any of us could have even imagined. It was scary, but not… not like this. This time, we're alone, we don't know what we're doing, and we don't even have a plan for actually stopping anybody or anything. We're just floundering around hoping we'll run across a clue. I think of everything we need to do and I just feel… futile.” Yumi did not lift her gaze from the table once during her explanation. She spoke to the grains of wood on the surface, trying to figure out if it was real or just a pattern. It was probably fake, but she couldn't stop herself anyway. She didn't want to look back up.

“You said it yourself,” Jeremie said quietly. “We have to just get up and do it.”

“Yeah,” Yumi said. “We will. But I think we're being naive if we expect things to go like last time did. I think we're naive to… expect the same level of success that we were used to.”

“Do you really believe what you're saying?” Jeremie's tone was casual, but the question itself came off to Yumi as sharp. She shot her head up and Jeremie was looking at her with a concerned look on his face.

“I… what do you mean?”

“You pretty much just said we're going to fail. Do you really think that? Or are you just afraid that we might?” His voice was still not angry. In fact, he almost sounded hurt. “I… know that this whole fight always weighed heavily on you. And I know you've got a lot on your plate right now, but you've always been one of the strongest people I know.”

“I… guess I'm just afraid.” Yumi fiddled with her straw again, but kept eye contact with Jeremie. “I just can't visualize victory.”

“We've only just started,” Jeremie said. “We've got a long way to go, but the only way we can go is up. I know it's scary. But have faith. You're more powerful than you seem to think.”

“You know, Jeremie, everyone always looked at you and saw the guy who was good with computers, but something no one ever talks about is your… spirit. Your ability to keep people going. To inspire.” Yumi smiled. “I guess that's why you're the leader. So I'll keep following.” She stood up and looked out the window. “Come on, Einstein, we've got more offices to go to.”

Jeremie smiled as he and Yumi walked out of the restaurant. He decided not to bring attention to the fact that it was he who was following her.

–

Jim's apartment was exactly what Odd pictured it to be: a mess. There were all kinds of things on the floor, from discarded paper plates to clothes to books on gymnastics and walls covered with immeasurable memorabilia from God knew what. Trophies and photographs were all around, even a few certificates. The ones that Odd could read from where he stood congratulated Jim on a perfect score in bowling in 1998 and thanked him for his service in the Canadian Wildlife Service. On the far wall, in a gold frame, was a letter that appeared to bear the seal of the President of France. Odd noted that that section of the room was far less messy.

In the kitchen, Jim was rustling around frantically with cups and stammering apologies for the state of his apartment. He emerged, red-faced, a few moments later with three cups of tea. His hair was much grayer than it had been before, and it seemed to Odd like Jim's belly was a bit bigger, but the goofy grin on his face was still the same. And it wasn't like Odd didn't look crazy different either.

“Anyway, Stern, Della Robbia, what a pleasant surprise! What brings you back to town?”

“Oh, just… y'know, taking a little vacation,” Ulrich said with a nervous chuckle.

Odd took a cup of tea from Jim. He had always been more of a coffee guy, but after Jim had flailed around so much it seemed rude to deny the tea, so he took a sip anyway. It wasn't actually half bad. “So what have you been up to, Jimbo, old pal? Still playing the trombone?”

Jim laughed. “I try to, every now and then! Haven't gotten any better, heh heh.”

“That's because you can't improve when you're already the best,” Ulrich said with a grin. He brought the cup to his lips but, Odd noticed, he did not actually drink it.

Elisabeth quietly moved into the living room and took a seat on Jim's sofa, which practically ate her alive. She managed to find a way to sit in it with grace, however. She must have had practice. “How about everyone come have a seat?”

The sofa was the only seating in the room besides the easy chair that was obviously Jim's preferred seat. There were several drinking cups around it and two books laid across the armrests. It appeared to be at least as old as Odd, and possibly as old as Jim himself. It creaked violently when Jim dropped into it, but held steadfast. Jim sighed in contentment as he sat down. Odd and Ulrich both sat gingerly on the sofa, with Odd in the middle. There was a silence after everyone sat down and was not quite sure what to say.

“Ulrich, you look pretty strong, are you still playing football?” Jim grinned.

“I, uh, got injured pretty bad a while back. I don't play anymore,” Ulrich said, staring at his feet.

“Oh,” said Jim. “Well, uh, Odd, tell me your story, you look like you have one.”

Odd chuckled. “Oh, I went to art school for a while but then I dr-, I, uh, moved to America and started making films.” He wrung his hands as he spoke.

“Are they any good?”

“No,” Odd said bluntly. “But they're fun.”

“Well that's all that counts, I suppose,” Jim said.

The silence in the room was deafening. Jim's stomach grumbled. Ulrich absentmindedly patted his legs. Elisabeth cleared her throat and then took a drink of tea. She set it down, then immediately picked it back up and took another drink, as if she wasn't sure of what else to do. Odd took off his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, then put them back on. It was an old habit, part of Oscar that still hadn't quite faded yet. “So,” Odd said. “Jim, I… think you might have an idea of why we dropped by.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “I figured.”

“Have you heard anything from William Dunbar recently? Or anything about him?” Elisabeth had set down her cup of tea and was leaning forward now.

“W-William? No.” Jim blinked. “Maybe I didn't know what you came here to talk about.”

“Er, sorry,” Elisabeth said. “The issues are related, I just forgot you didn't know. Jim, no one has heard from William in years. And we think the reason he's vanished and the reason all the teachers have vanished are related. So it's very important to tell us anything you might know about William.”

“He… well he got so weird his last year… I shouldn't say weird, but he was… different. You all must have noticed, you were his friends,” Jim said. Odd and Ulrich looked at each other for a moment. “And then he was quiet. A lot of us teachers were really worried about him. We talked about him a lot, in the teacher's lounge. About how his personality was changing so rapidly, and then how he was so withdrawn towards the end. Some of us tried to reach out to him. I tried, he wouldn't really talk to me. Suzanne Hertz seemed to get through to him a little, she said he was coming to see her after classes to catch up on some homework. But then he graduated, and I never heard from him again.” Jim shrugged. “I mean, it's not like he was the only one. Plenty of students act strangely in middle school, it's a tough time for kids, we all knew that. Plenty of students never keep in touch. I certainly hadn't heard from any of you until today.”

“But you knew I was playing football at one point,” Ulrich noted. “You must hear things.”

Jim sighed. “Yeah, we hear things.” He toyed with the zipper on his jacket for a few moments. “Though I heard you were playing football through Sissi. I… haven't heard much about William. Seems like I heard a couple things early on, just after he graduated. Teachers saying they had seen him. Suzanne, I think she said William was attending the school she worked at before she came here.”

“Before she replaced Franz Hopper,” Ulrich said.

“Uh, yeah.” Jim blinked. “What does-”

“Nevermind that. What did Mrs. Hertz say about William? Anything?” Odd lifted his hand to silence Ulrich.

“Just that the people she still knew there were telling her that William was still quiet and withdrawn,” Jim said. “He wasn't doing too well. He didn't come back the next year.”

“Do you happen to know where William is from?” Elisabeth had leaned back into the couch, almost melting into the cushions. Her face seemed resigned.

“Not a clue. I thought he was, like, British or something. But he spoke French better than I do, so there's that,” Jim said with a shrug. “I seem to recall he came to Kadic from another school, I remember Jean-Pierre mentioning that we were getting a new student from one of the, uh, troubled schools.”

“Troubled schools?” Ulrich raised an eyebrow.

“I mean a… school for youth who had… disciplinary… setbacks,” Jim stammered. “Y'know.” He wrung his hands. “I shouldn't be telling you this. But all the teachers were told… Kadic's a place with a reputation, y'know, so we were all sorta told that we needed to keep an eye on William. I don't remember why he had gotten kicked out of the other school, something about plastering weird poems all over the place. But we were supposed to catch him before he ended up doing anything crazy like that. So we all sort of kept an eye out, but he seemed pretty normal. Chased after Yumi a bit, but hey, who didn't do a little chasing in middle school? I seem to recall Sissi-”

“So what you're telling us,” Elisabeth said very quickly and very loudly, “is that William had a history of disciplinary issues. Were any of you worried that he was going to slip back into that? Or that he already had?”

“That was our assumption, when we heard he had left that school,” Jim said.

“That's strange, that's pretty contradictory to what Jeremie had figured out earlier,” Elisabeth said.

“Well, hey, we didn't hear anything for sure, your guess is as good as mine.” Jim shrugged. “I would tell you to reach out to Suzanne Hertz, but...”

“But she's gone off the radar,” Elisabeth finished.

“Yeah,” Jim said. There was a forlorn look on his face for his moment, but he physically shook it away. “She was one of the first to leave. You told them about Jean-Pierre, right?” Elisabeth nodded. “Jean-Pierre got offered this job, and within a month Suzanne had left. Yolande the nurse was next, then Rosa Pettijean… and all the teachers were gone within a few months. Mrs. Knapp was the last to go, the math teacher, she was young, I asked her not to go, I told her I felt alone…” He sighed deeply. “It's not the same school anymore. All the new teachers carry on, they're nice people, but it's just… hollow. But I can't leave.”

“Do you know where any of them went?” Ulrich tried to speak gently, but it just made his voice sound creaky.

“Not really… well I know Yolande is at Sissi's hospital. Mrs. Knapp went abroad, I think. Gustav Chardin… God, I think he might be dead. Gilles Fumet, er, I mean I never really got to know the man, but I think he might still be around, I thought I saw him the other day at the supermarket, but it could have just been a man in a scarf. Why he would be wearing a scarf in this heat I don't know, but-”

“Jim,” Elisabeth said softly. He stopped rambling immediately. “Are you sure you don't know where any of them are?”

Jim returned to playing with the zipper on his jacket. “I… might have heard from Suzanne a little while ago,” he finally admitted. “She, ah, she and her boyfriend finally...” Jim stopped and tried to collect his thoughts. His face turned red, but he continued. “Well, anyway, she and I spoke for a little while over the phone. I didn't recognize the number and she didn't say where she was.”

“Did you talk about anything else?” Odd was trying to restrain himself from wincing.

“She said that she was traveling.” Jim paused. “No, I'll be honest with you kids. She said she was on the run.”

“From what?” Odd was leaning forward now, eagerly awaiting Jim's next words. They all were. “What was she running from, Jim?”

“You know exactly what,” Jim said darkly. His voice was gruffer all of a sudden, gravelly even. The gleam in his eyes that had sparked when he mentioned Mrs. Hertz was gone, replaced with a foreboding weight that seemed to bring down his face and make him look even older. “From Project Carthage.”

Odd and Ulrich blinked. “How much do you know about Project Carthage? How much does she know?” Ulrich's throat felt dry, and his heart was beating a million times a minute.

“I know it's what Jean-Pierre is working on. I know has something to do with Franz Hopper. And I know that it has something to do with you. We all know that.” Jim crossed his arms and stared right into Ulrich's eyes. “I don't know what she knows. Suzanne came in after Franz. But Gustav, Gilles and I were all there while he was there. We all knew he had baggage. Odd man. Paranoid. One day he vanished. Just like William. Just like all the teachers. Everyone who touches this stuff vanishes.” Jim stood up. “You aren't safe here,” he said.

Elisabeth stood up with him. “Oh, Jim, don't say that…”

“You aren't,” he repeated, matter-of-factly. “Kids, in case you have the wrong idea, all the teachers didn't leave because they were taken away. They ran because they knew if they stayed, there would be trouble. None of them wanted to be pawns in whatever game this is that's getting played. And I don't want you to be, either. You should all go on, go back to America or Germany or wherever you want to go, and just… just go be safe, somewhere far away. I've lost all my friends, I've lost a man who was a father and a brother all at once, I don't want to lose you all too.” There was something sparkling in the bottom of Jim's eyes. There was something sparkling in all their eyes.

“We… we can't run. We have to fight. We have to find William and make sure they don't get him,” Ulrich said.

“What's William got to do with this? I just don't get it.”

“William is the key to bringing about what Project Carthage wants. They get him, it's all over. You… you don't know, and we can't tell you, but… this is an incredible, powerful evil that they're toying with. We're the only ones who know. We're the only ones who can stop it,” Ulrich said. “We've done it before.”

Jim laughed. “What, in the sewers you were always sneaking around in?” Before Ulrich could say anything, Jim raised a hand. “Don't answer that. Just… just promise me that you'll be safe. Promise me that I won't lose you.”

“You won't lose us,” Ulrich said. “I promise.”

“If I hear anything, I will let you know,” Jim said. “Now you kids need to get out of here.” Jim opened his front door and gestured outward. “Go on out there and…” Jim grinned, laughing to himself and shaking his head. “Go on out there and save the world.”

–

Akiko Ishiyama was waiting in the living room when Yumi returned. The TV was on, but muted, and she had the same Shakespeare book on her hand. The room was dark except for the flickering of the television and the lamp lit next to her mother's chair. She was dressed in a nightgown with a blanket over her lap. “Did you have fun with your friends?” Her voice was quiet, but seemed to be cheerful in tone.

“Yeah,” Yumi said.

“You haven't come home this late in a long time. A long time,” her mother said.

“I'm sorry,” Yumi said. “Our, uh, plans ran late.” Somehow, even though they had all learned almost nothing, they had spent hours together in the apartment talking about plans going forward. Everything was suddenly so mysterious. How much did the teachers know? Now they were looking for Mrs. Hertz of all people, on top of William. This was turning into some kind of wild goose chase.

“Why is it that whenever Jeremie and Aelita and Ulrich and Odd are around, you always come home late? What is it that you all do?”

“Oh, we, uh, we, uh,” Yumi trailed off, staring at her feet.

“Relax, Yumi, I was joking, not giving you the third degree.” Her mother grinned at Yumi, then motioned for her to come closer. “But… I did hear some things this afternoon that worried me a little.”

Yumi's stomach sank. “What do you mean?” She stepped forward as her mother indicated and stood next to her. Her mother seemed so small, absorbed by the chair and the big blanket.

“The walls in this house are not necessarily thick, Yumi,” her mother said. “They never have been. I remember all the phone conversations you had at odd hours, I couldn't hear what you said but you sounded tense. You sounded tense today. I heard Aelita shouting. She sounded scared. What's going on, Yumi? You can tell me things that are troubling you.” She reached out and patted Yumi on the arm.

“Oh… it's nothing. She was just, Ulrich was on the phone and it sounded like he was hurt but he just fell,” Yumi said. Her words sounded lame as they came out of her mouth. The dissatisfied look on her mother's face told her that she thought the same.

“I have always known when you are lying to me,” she said. “Always.”

Yumi bit at her fingernails. “Oh,” she said, in a long, distressed sigh. “We're… do you remember William? The boy with the shaggy black hair who was always annoying me at Kadic? He's missing. We're trying to find him. That's why we all came back.”

Her mother's expression changed into shock. “William? I do remember him. He seemed like such a nice young man.”

Yumi arched an eyebrow. “Do… do you really think so?”

“Well of course, after he came all that way to see y- oh my God. Oh, my God, I never told you, did I?” The blanket fell off Akiko's legs as she stood up, her jaw dropping.

“Never told me what? What's going on?” Yumi placed a hand on her mother's shoulder to brace her, but she shrugged it off.

“He came to visit you once. It was a year after you graduated… I can't believe I forgot. I promised him I would tell you he came to see you and it totally slipped my mind.” She was walking over to the closet, faster than Yumi had seen her move in quite some time. “Oh God, the flowers are even still here.” From the closet she pulled out what had once been a bouquet of roses. They had dried, and in a way, they were actually still beautiful in a haunting kind of way. Truth be told, dried roses were probably more her thing than live ones.

Yumi took the roses, unsure of what to do with them. “Are you telling me that these have been in this closet for eleven years?”

“Yes,” her mother said in a defeated tone of voice. “I put them way in the back so they could be a surprise, I remember it perfectly now, I can't believe I forgot. He said he was moving away and wanted to say goodbye. We talked for a while, he was so sweet, talking about how he had treated you and that he felt badly. I told him you wouldn't be home until later, but he had to go, so he wrote you this letter. Here.” Her mother handed her an envelope, still sealed, and flicked on the kitchen light. “I'm going to go to bed, I'll leave you to this. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you.” Her mother shuffled back up the stairs, but Yumi didn't notice. She was staring at the envelope, on which was written her name in simple, neat handwriting. She tore it open – the old paper tore easily – and with a rapidly beating heart, began to read. She recognized the paper as from the pad of paper her mother had kept on the kitchen table for years, with roses in the corner and green lines running across it. It was like looking right back into the past.

July 5^th , 2007

Dear Yumi,

I'm sorry I missed you today. Your mother and I talked a bit, and I can see where you get your grace as well as your sharp wit. She's a wonderful woman, just like you.

I came to tell you that I was sorry. I was horribly nervous, coming all this way, trying to think of how I would manage to say all the things I wanted to say. I suppose this is easier for me because I get to write it down, but I wish I had been able to say it to you face-to-face anyway. You know my history with letters, I hope this doesn't come off as weird. I just didn't want to leave without truly apologizing.

It's been a year since you and I left Kadic, and about six months since we've stopped really talking. That's okay. I've been doing a lot of thinking recently, and one of the things I've thought about was how badly I treated you. I treated you like something to attain, something to win, something I had to compete for. I liked you, and along the way my feelings morphed to wanting you, and wanting to have you. As if you were something I could possess. I followed you, I invaded your personal space, and I am sure that I was physically and emotionally draining on you. For all of that, for all that I stressed you out or made you uncomfortable, from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry.

You're a really amazing person, Yumi. I thought about you a lot, when I was away. (I hope you'll know what I mean when I say that. That time that I was far away for a while.) I thought about everyone, but you in particular. I missed you. Of all the people I've ever met, and I've been to a lot of schools and met a lot of people, you are the strongest. You are capable of everything you set your mind to. You're talented, you're confident, and you know what you like and what you want your life to be. I admire that about you. I admire that you are complete without anyone or anything else. I admire that despite all the battles that you've fought, both the literal ones and the emotional ones, you have always remained true to yourself. You've never lost yourself in the war, like I did. When I was away, I thought of you as a source for inspiration. If I could be like Yumi, I could get back, I told myself. I could never actually defeat the person who had taken me away. But you all did, and I admire that, too.

While I don't want to spend too much time on the topic, because I'm sure it's awkward, I do want you to know that I'm not harboring any secret, bursting romantic feelings for you anymore. I get that you said no, and I respect that. I just wanted you to know that even so, I think you're an incredible person, and you ought to hear that more often.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm leaving. I can't really say where, because I'm not sure yet. But I need to leave. A few days ago, I went back to the Factory. I couldn't remember the elevator code so I just walked around on the upper level. It was strange, seeing the parts of the Factory that were actually a factory. Most of the stuff had been taken out, but there were still some conveyor belts and stuff around. Some weird robot looking arms, that kind of thing. I felt strange being there, I felt off. And then, just as I was going to leave, I brushed against one of the robot arms and it started moving. It scared the shit out of me and I screamed “STOP!” And a bolt of lightning shot out of my hand and fried it.

I don't really know what it means. I suppose it could have been some freak coincidence. But I don't think it is. So I think I need to go away. Just in case. I've got some money from my dad, so don't worry, I'm going to be able to get what I need and be okay. I'm going to go somewhere secluded, somewhere I can figure out myself and see if anything else happens. I wonder if monasteries still exist? I could be a monk. LOL! I will be honest with you, I am afraid. I am afraid for the both of us though, so you don't need to be. I hope that whatever this is turns out to be nothing, and I can come back soon. But even if I don't, I want you to know that I did what I did to keep everyone safe, and I did it of my own volition. I am of sound mind. I haven't had any weird thoughts or nightmares or anything. I've been sleeping great. I don't think the thing that took me away is coming back, but I do think I've been changed, and I want to make sure that I haven't been changed for the worse. You all worked far too hard to save me and save the world for me to go and mess it up. (Again.)

Please trust that I will be okay, and don't go looking for me. If things are fine, I'll be back soon enough with no harm done. But if I don't come back, that means things aren't fine, and you wouldn't want me around anyway. And tell Ulrich that I'm sorry to him, too. I was kind of a dick. I mean, he was too. But I was a dick first. I think. It's hard to remember. It feels like so long ago, and so far away, like it happened in another world.

Of course, part of it actually did.

Be well, Yumi. I'll miss you. And even now, I'll be thinking of you. If I can be like you, I can get through this.

With love and friendship,

William Dunbar

Yumi set down the letter with a shaking hand. As soon as she was done reading, her eyes clouded. She felt weak, and sick, and proud, all at the same time. He had become so strong. He had grown up. But what did this all mean? If I don't come back, that means things aren't fine, and you wouldn't want me around anyway. She could practically hear his voice saying the words. She let out a sob, and then another, and then the tears began to fall in earnest. She let herself cry, let her mind clear itself, until she wasn't thinking of anything. Her chest heaved and her entire body shook and her hair got in her face, but it felt good to cry.

When she looked back up, she grabbed the letter and read it over again, trying to hear William's voice in every word. Before, he had just been an abstraction, a goal to reach. Not unlike how William had treated her, she realized. But now, he was a real person, out there in the world, going through something confusing and scary. He was out there fighting his own battle just as they were fighting theirs. She wished she could reach through the letter and find the hand that wrote it. Her heart felt powerful enough to do it. It ached, in a broken way that it hadn't felt in a long time. It ached for a lost friend, tossed out into the world with nothing to go on but fear. They had to find him. She knew they would. William, if anything, had a good head on his shoulders. She could tell that now.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Emotions were running high and it was hard for her to think straight. There was still a crisis going on, and she had to keep her thoughts in order. Tomorrow they were going to meet up again, and obviously this was going to be a major point of discussion. Jeremie would be suggesting a visit to every church in Île-de-France, almost certainly. First thing first, however, Yumi was dead tired, and suddenly parched, she realized. Her mother had left a glass of water on the table next to her chair. Yumi stood up to go over and get it, but felt herself stop in her tracks.

I do think I've been changed, William's voice echoed in her head.

Not entirely sure why she was doing it, Yumi outstretched her arm and stared at the glass of water on the table.

The glass, two meters away, lurched forward several centimeters, hovered in the air for a heartbeat, and then fell to the ground and shattered.

  END OF PART I

Chapter Text

“I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the Earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky – seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”

-Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”

ECHOES OF ECHOES:
Finding William Dunbar

 PART II: ALL THAT WE LOVE
CHAPTER I: JEAN-PIERRE

Elisabeth Delmas was a woman who was raised to expect a certain kind of lifestyle. She wasn't ashamed to admit it, though she was perhaps a shade embarrassed of how she acted about it when she was young. And as she had gotten older, she had begun to face the reality that not every lifestyle is like hers, and now that she was responsible for the course of her own life, she was proud that she had become able to function without being handed the luxuries of life without having to work for them. She was a medical intern who worked in a large hospital, facing the unvarnished, harsh realities of lives all across the spectrum and very often had to work with limited resources and almost no time for leisure or room for second chances. Hard work was not alien to her, and she was proud of her resolve. Soon-to-be Doctor Elisabeth Delmas did not shy away from a challenge, did not complain when circumstances were not ideal, and never complained that what she had was not the very best. She made it work. That was her new strength.

Still, she might have liked her father to make something a little more satisfying than microwaved TV dinners for their first meal together in months.

Dinners with her father had always been a special occasion. Not quite as special as, say, a birthday or a holiday, but still something Elisabeth had always looked forward to, because they were not common. Her father had always been a busy man, he often worked late or was out of town for conferences or the like on weekends. He and her mother had divorced for that very reason, when Elisabeth had been very young. Dinners alone, or in the cafeteria, had been part of Elisabeth's life for as long as she could remember. So when her father had the time and the energy to make something at home and they could have a true meal, just the two of them, that was always nice.

Or at least it had been when her father worked at Kadic. She looked down at the watery, off-white mass that was allegedly mashed potato on her tray, and then up at her father. Having long ago gone gray, at 68 years old his hair was white and beginning to thin. Lines creased his face at his eyes and around his mouth. His jowls now drooped more noticeably than what his beard, a mottled mass of white and gray, could cover. While a recent eye surgery had replaced his need for glasses, that just made his eyebrows seem all the more bushy and made it easier to notice his wrinkles since the lenses were no longer drawing her attention. He had lost weight since the last time she had seen him, which actually just made her concerned. Having the chance to sit across from him at the table had always been such a comfort, but now it was like an awkward dinner with a stranger. She barely knew who the man across from her was.

Over the course of twenty minutes, Elisabeth watched her father eat the TV dinner, which was a fish filet, green beans, mashed potatoes, and something that claimed to be chocolate pudding. The room was full of the sounds of smacking and chewing, but Jean-Pierre never said a word. He barely lifted his head from leaning over the tray, and when he did, he cast his gaze over his daughter's shoulder, towards the computer monitor behind her. Elisabeth turned to look at it a few times, but it never seemed to show anything other than a white screen with words too small for her to care to try to read from her distance. She watched as flecks of potato or crumbs of breading from the fish began to gather in her father's beard, and gradually felt herself becoming disgusted. It was almost grotesque to watch the pale shell of the man she had grown up with crane over the small, pathetic little meal and eat so loudly and so sloppily. As if he cared for nothing, least of all her.

Why did he even invite her over in the first place, she wondered. Of course, she already knew the answer.

“So how are your friends?” Jean-Pierre had finally lifted his head and looked at his daughter. There was still food in his beard. His eyes betrayed no glimmer of emotion at all. In fact, if anything, he just looked bored.

“Fine,” Elisabeth said, as if by instinct. “Yumi's mother seems to have stabilized for now, Jeremie has settled into his new job-”

“That isn't what I meant,” Jean-Pierre muttered. “Wait, what is his new job?”

Elisabeth sighed. “I know it wasn't, I just thought you might- well, whatever. Jeremie works for the London Stock Exchange, he does IT there.”

“And Stones?”

“She's an audio engineer, I think she works for a recording studio.”

“And the others? Have you seen them yet?”

“Yeah. But they haven't said much about themselves. Ulrich is a model, but he used to play football.”

“Yes, I spoke with him. I called him the day after you met with Belpois. What about Odd? Have you learned nothing of him? He's the one we know the least about.”

Elisabeth frowned into her tray, which she had still not touched. She was starving, and the mashed potatoes almost started to smell appetizing – almost. “No. He didn't speak of himself. The only thing he mentioned was that he hadn't spoken with his parents. Jeremie and Ulrich both know about theirs. And they are suspicious of Yumi's brother.”

“Odd's parents are being dealt with,” Jean-Pierre said, matter-of-factly. “We haven't bothered with the brother, though did they mention anything about him? Could he be a liability?”

Elisabeth blinked. Liability? “I… think Yumi said he isn't doing well in school. I don't… I don't think he would be? I didn't really… I mean, he was only brought up incidentally.”

Her father snorted. “I'm not surprised he isn't doing well. Always running around with pranks, him and that boy with the red face.” For just a moment, Elisabeth's heart lightened. It made her feel better, even in the circumstances, to see her father remember being an educator. But it did not last. “What have they surmised of our operations?”

“They know that you're tracking them. They're not really taking too many steps to conceal themselves, because they know they can't hide, so they're just trying to be fast. They have a lot of cash, like, a lot of cash, so don't expect to be able to track them through banks. And they're not going anywhere near the Factory. They think it isn't safe, and none of them can remember the pass code to get in, anyway.”

“Hmph.” Jean-Pierre scowled. “What do they know about William?”

Elisabeth tensed. “Well… pretty much… nothing. They only have wild theories. They looked all over the city for records, in person. No one named William Dunbar has died or gotten arrested or gotten married or purchased property in the City of Paris or any of the neighboring suburbs since 2006. They even looked at possible aliases. The only thing they reported was that apparently Thomas Jolivet was born in 1959.”

“Don't waste my time,” her father snapped. “Did they look into other schools? What did they make of what you told me, about seeing him?”

“Jeremie is pretty sure that he attended Bretueil Academy, in Sèvres, but they wouldn't release information to him because he wasn't William or his parent. But it was only for a year, anyway. Rumors seem to indicate William didn't do well there.”

“Then they're going to reach out to James Dunbar. Listen very carefully to what they get from him. We didn't get much information from him. He may be more open to his son's friends. This is imperative. There is almost certainly no one more knowledgeable in this world about where William is than his father.” Suddenly, Jean-Pierre was alive again, his face and voice alight with intensity. “See if you can find out where he is, he has moved offices too often for us to keep track.” He paused. “Wait a minute. Rumors from where?”

“What?”

“You said rumors indicated William didn't do well at school. Rumors from where? Have they heard from teachers? What aren't you telling me?”

“Alright, alright, we spoke to Jim! Jesus.” Elisabeth threw up her hands. “I didn't tell you because he didn't say anything certain that was new. He doesn't know where any of them are. He doesn't know anything. He's just… sad.”

Jean-Pierre sighed. “None of them have contacted him?”

“None,” Elisabeth lied. Her father glared at her for a moment, his expression eventually morphing from a frown back into emotionlessness.

“Is there anything else you didn't think you needed to tell me?”

“Um… they're thinking of looking at churches around to see if he joined the clergy?” Elisabeth offered a shrug.

“I told you not to waste my time.” Jean-Pierre stood up, shaking the table as he did so. Flecks of so-called gravy spattered on Elisabeth's shirt, and she stared at the stain with a frown. “You are the only hope we have of making sure these kids lead us to William. If we get William, everything goes back to the way it was. You still want that, don't you?”

Brown sauce dripped down her shirt. It had been a gift from her father last Christmas, pink with gold stars. Perhaps just a little childish, but it was still a favorite. Or it had been, until just now – she had a feeling the stain would always be there. Just like this moment, this last year, would be a stain on her relationship with her father and with her life. She doubted it would ever be back to the way it was. But she did want to try. She desperately wanted to try. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Then listen to every little thing they say, and come back to dinner next week.”

“Right,” Elisabeth said, standing up. Her father was already back to his computer, and she knew he wouldn't be getting back up any time soon, nor would he be particularly chatty. It wasn't any use to stay.

“And, Sissi? Perhaps next week I'll… have something better for you. Bouillinade, is that still your favorite?”

Elisabeth stopped walking toward the door and turned back to her father. Though his back was still to her, his head was turned to the side, as close as it could be to her without moving. So that was a start, at least. “Yeah,” she responded. “That sounds nice. Or at least order Vietnamese or something. This was a war crime,” she said, gesturing at the tray still on the table. Her voice had transitioned from soft to her classic shrillness, though only in jest. Well, mostly in jest. And for just a moment, Elisabeth saw her father's lips curl upward.

“Duly noted,” her father said. He turned back to the screen, and Elisabeth walked outside.

It was cooler and breezier that night than it had been in quite some time, though it was still fairly warm. There was no one on the street; it was almost so quiet that it was unsettling. Only in the far distance could she hear any cars. Her father's new place was in a strange part of town, there were no children, no cafes, no bars anywhere. Just cookie-cutter houses that all went to sleep at 9 at night. All of them had plenty of trees and hedges, but her father's lawn had more tall shrubs than it seemed to have grass. You could barely see the front windows, and even if you could, they were covered with thick black curtains at all hours.

The car in the driveway was a brand new full-size sedan the color of wine, with windows that were tinted just as darkly. Almost certainly tinted illegally, but she had a feeling that didn't quite apply to her father anymore. She felt out of place, and like even the quiet sound of her footsteps were a disturbance. The nearest Metro station was a fifteen minute walk, and she decided it wasn't worth it to walk all that way while she felt so off. She hailed an Uber with her phone and waited on the stoop. It was fifteen minutes before the car showed up, and in that time, she did not see or hear another living soul. When she stepped into the car and saw the face of her driver, it felt like the first time she had seen a human in years. And yet, despite the crushing silence, during the entire ride, she did not say a word.

In stark contrast from the veritable graveyard that was her father's neighborhood, the apartment of her cousin Sebastian was in the middle of one of the busiest streets the Paris nightlife had to offer. It took almost five solid minutes just for the driver to find a place to stop so Elisabeth could get out. Sebastian was not technically her cousin anymore; he had been married to a cousin of hers, but they had divorced two years previously. Still, he was nice enough, and had asked Elisabeth to keep his keys and make sure the place didn't burn down while he was in Russia working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If she did much drinking anymore it would have been a fantastic place to crash, but as it was, med school took up most of her free time. It had turned out to be fortuitous, though, in that suddenly she knew several other people who needed a place to crash much more than she did.

His apartment was on the third floor. The stairwell was narrow and dark – strange for such a posh location – but at this point in the night, Elisabeth had become accustomed to darkness and solitude. She took the steps slowly, and found that she was slower the higher she went. It wasn't from exhaustion, it was from trepidation – from guilt. Would they be able to know, when they saw her? That she had just told her father what he had told him? That she was a spy? A plant? She had gotten so angry when Aelita dared imply Jim would betray them, and yet, there she was. She had been observing them from the start. From the very moment Jeremie had first called her. It made her sick. It really, truly did.

But she needed her father back. He had always been there for her. And now, she was there for him. There couldn't be any other way. Her father needed her, so that they could both be free of this mess. So they could be a family again. There was no way that Elisabeth Delmas would let anyone take her father from her, not the government, not the military, not Project Whatever-the-fuck-it-was. She was prepared to do whatever it took, because that's who she was. She would make it work. That was her new strength.

By the time she was nearing the third floor, her pace was no longer slow. In fact, she was downright marching. When she got to the apartment, the door was already open, and Aelita was standing in the frame. “Oh, Sissi,” she said, with a sigh. “I mean, Elisabeth. I… heard thumping. I was… worried.”

“Sorry,” Elisabeth said. “I was lost in tho-”

“SHE'S DOING IT! OH MY GOD, SHE'S REALLY DOING IT! LOOK!” Odd bellowed from the kitchen.

“Shut up, Odd!” Ulrich shouted almost as loudly. Elisabeth shut the door behind her and jogged over to the kitchen, Aelita hot on her tail. When they got to the kitchen, they were greeted with the sight of a ping-pong ball floating two meters in the air, Yumi's face a mask of concentration, and Jeremie's a look of shock beyond words.

“Well I'll be fucked,” Jeremie said. “Alright. I believe you.”

The ping-pong ball clattered to the floor and bounced a bit before rolling along the ground and hitting Aelita's shoe. She picked it up and looked at it for a moment. “I can't believe it. I don't even know what to think.”

“I'm not sure I really want to think about it,” Yumi said. “In fact, I've got a killer headache now, so I'm not even sure I can think.”

“Jeremie, I don't… I don't understand how this is possible. Help me out,” Aelita said.

“Well, there are two possibilities that strike me off the top of my head,” Jeremie intoned in the dramatic explanatory voice he reserved for special occasions. “The first is that we never actually left Lyoko, and the entirety of the past twelve years has been some kind of elaborate simulation concocted by XANA to keep us contained so that he can go about his plans unimpeded. The second is that somewhere along the line, after repeated disassembling and reassembling of our molecules by the Scanners, some kind of degradation or alteration occurred in which our bodies began to take on traits from our Lyoko avatars. And to be honest, the second is only marginally more likely than the first.”

“How do we even test that?” Aelita looked around the room, as if to find an Eye of XANA watching her from somewhere.

“How do we test that the Universe is an elaborate computer simulation? Well, actually, there's a number of very interesting-”

“Let's not get into that, my headache is bad enough without hearing about physics or whatever,” Yumi said, raising her hand. “I highly doubt that even at his peak, XANA would have been able to produce a simulation this realistic and sustain it for this long.”

“Yes,” Jeremie said. “I just… it strikes me as odd that these powers would take so long to emerge.”

“Well, William noticed his a year after,” Yumi said, pulling the note out of her pocket. “And it's not like I make a habit of trying to move things with my mind all the time. William's… uh, power, I guess, surfaced when he was scared. And to be honest, without Lyoko, my life has been pretty uninteresting this whole time. I don't remember the last time I was… afraid for my bodily integrity. So it makes sense to me that I wouldn't notice, or have reason to come across this… power.” She was silent for a moment, and then muttered to herself God, that feels weird to say.

“What does this mean for us?” Odd motioned at the rest of the group. “I guess I didn't have a power for very long… will Ulrich be able to split into three or something? Three Ulrichs. Imagine that.” Odd waggled his eyebrows at Ulrich, who shoved a hand in his face.

“Odd, I couldn't even begin to predict, this is all so… well, unpredictable. Never in a million years would I have ever expected...” Jeremie took a deep breath. “I don't think your power stuck, but then, I have no idea. Keep track of your dreams. Aelita seems to be able to dream of the future. I doubt she will express an ability to alter the state of her surroundings, just as I doubt Ulrich would be able to split himself. But he might be able to run very quickly, I suppose.”

Ulrich laughed. “I don't run at all anymore, so a fat load of good that will do me.”

“Well, who knows, at this point. But I think the powers that are surfacing all have something to do with the mind. While I was never truly 100% certain, I always operated under the presumption that when being virtualized, only the mind was truly turned from matter into energy and placed on Lyoko. The physical body was just stored, and the body of the avatar was created by the Supercomputer. So only the patterns of the mind would have the chance to be… corrupted in translation, as it were. It would have to have been a very slow and gradual process for the Scanners not to notice it.”

“I don't really understand what's going on at all,” Elisabeth said. “Someone help me out.”

“These were all powers we had on Lyoko,” Aelita said. “Ulrich could create duplicates of himself and run very quickly, Yumi had telekinesis… my power was altering nature, but I guess… I got the dreams back? That still doesn't make any sense, Jeremie.”

“Well, it does if you consider what XANA did to you all that time. Got into your head, sent you all those bad dreams and all. Perhaps it has to do with XANA being present in your mind and altering the way it works. Just as what seems to have happened with William; I doubt he was virtualized and devirtualized often enough to have quite the same effect as with Yumi. I guess it's a stretch, but I don't really know what to tell you, Aelita. It's happening.” Jeremie threw his hands up.

“That's a good point,” Elisabeth said. “That I can understand. It's happening, so… we just have to deal with it.”

The room was silent for a long time. Everyone looked from person to person, but no one spoke. Outside, the sounds of partying youth was distant but still loud enough to make out words. “No, you're drunk!” someone bellowed into the night. Odd snickered. But they still remained silent.

“So… how was dinner with your father?” Aelita finally spoke, in a quiet tone.

“I don't really want to talk about it,” Elisabeth said. The room returned to silence.

“So… what do you want to do tomorrow, guys? Should we… really look into the church thing?” Jeremie was staring at his shoes.

“I suppose it's worth some attention, but I don't think it merits any significant effort,” Aelita said. “Let's not go around town to every single church.”

“I didn't expect to hit a dead end so quickly,” Jeremie said. “Maybe we really ought to hire a private investigator. I think I'll do that tomorrow. They can do the work with the churches, maybe look around in places we overlooked. I mean, we've certainly got the money.”

“What, um, what about William's father? Have we tried… looking into him? At all? It seems to me like there wouldn't be anyone more knowledgeable in the word about William's location than his own father.” Elisabeth's voice was small when she spoke. She felt small. Small and guilty. But only for a moment.

“Well sure, but no one knows who he is. It would be in his school records, but we can't get to those records because we aren't William or his father.” Jeremie was still staring at his shoes.

Elisabeth took a breath. “We, uh… really need to find William, right? I mean… it's a pretty big deal? That's what I've been led to believe. So, uh, I don't quite know how to say this, but I think we need to begin to consider working outside the conventional bounds of, well, the law.”

Jeremie's face snapped up and he met Elisabeth's eyes with a wide-eyed glare. It wasn't upset, it was more afraid. “That's… that's really dangerous. Trust me. I know.”

“Isn't Carthage getting its hands on XANA much more dangerous?” Elisabeth crossed her arms. “We're up against the government here. Or… something with the same force as government. We need to accept the reality that what we need to do might not always be... allowed.”

“You're right,” Yumi said forcefully. “You're absolutely right.”

“So, what are you suggesting? That we break into Kadic's records office?” Jeremie arched an eyebrow.

“Well… that sounds like a decent idea, yes,” Elisabeth said. “I mean, it's not really like it's hard. You climb in a window. It's been so hot recently, it would almost certainly be open. You find the drawer labeled D, you pull out his folder. Kadic keeps records for twenty years before we archive them off-site. Or… they archive them, I guess. Unless the new Headmaster changed things, I don't know. But presuming it's there, it takes 10 minutes.”

“Gee, Elisabeth, have you been thinking about this?” Odd looked at Elisabeth over his glasses, a smirk plastered on his face.

“No!” Elisabeth snapped quickly. “I just… I mean, my dad worked in that office for as long as I can remember.” She paused for a moment, and then smiled. “Finally I can contribute something.”

“Well… alright, we'll… plan for that, then. Who should go? Any takers?” Jeremie looked around the room. No one jumped up.

“I think Odd and Ulrich should do it. Both of them are completely unrecognizable,” Yumi said, nudging Ulrich in the arm with her elbow. Yumi was grinning, Ulrich was not.

“It's not like it matters, no one there is the same anymore.” It was Ulrich's turn to stare at his shoes. “But I suppose I'll do it. I mean, like I keep saying, I can't run, so if I get caught, one of you better bail me out of jail.”

“We've got the cash,” Odd said. “And I'll come be your backup, no problem. Yumi, maybe you should come and, like… distract the office staff somehow, while Ulrich and I do the sneaking.”

Yumi shrugged. “Fine. My mother did tell me to get out more.”

“So there we have it,” Jeremie said. “Grand Theft Manilla Folder.” He offered a smile at his little joke, but it faded quickly. “I'm going to… go to bed, then. Good night, everyone.”

A chorus of “good nights” rang through the kitchen as Jeremie walked off. Elisabeth glanced at the clock, it was barely past 10. A little early for bed. Still, she did feel pretty tired. Or perhaps exhausted was a better word. Mentally exhausted. And she did have work early in the morning. “Maybe I should get going too,” she said. “Work in the morning. Is there anything you need me for tomorrow? My shift will be over at 4.”

“Just stay on call,” Aelita said, and then smiled. “No pun intended.”

“Ha ha ha,” Elisabeth said. “Good night then, everyone.” She did not listen to her chorus of good nights. Her mind moved her feet in autopilot, and she did not even remember the train ride home. All she could think about the whole time was her father. What a zombie he had been, eating his dinner. How old he had gotten, and how bad he looked. How hollow he had become. And what trying to help him had done to her.

Elisabeth Delmas did not lie easily. Perhaps she may have made it look like she did, and maybe at some points in her life – early points – maybe she did. But certainly not anymore. She detested lying and she detested liars. And yet, here she was, lying through her teeth to her friends and to her father. These were the people who were supposed to matter the most, weren't they? Hadn't that been what everyone spat at her all those years, that all she cared about was herself? Isn't that what she was doing now?

“No.” She spoke it aloud to an empty apartment. There were no lights on; only the moon and a streetlight brought any light in, and it wasn't much. Dim shadows of curtains played on the floor where Elisabeth stood. She watched them move for a moment. It reminded her of a really old, black and white detective movie. Her father had been a fan, as she remembered. She was never crazy about them, but she watched them with him when she was little. That man was gone now. Stolen by agents with dark suits and darker souls, and replaced with some automaton with no regard for feeling or humanity. They took him from his life's work and set him on some wacked-out mission to find the legacy of some crazy old man and some weird young kid. They had taken everything he had built. Everything she had built. And she was going to get it back.

That's what she was doing. She was defending her family. She was doing what needed to be done. It didn't feel good. She didn't like what she was doing. But she would do it, because she had to.

She would make it work. That was her new strength.

Chapter Text

PART II: ALL THAT WE LOVE
CHAPTER II: JAMES

MISSION CLOCK: +0:00:00 [MISSION START]
OPERATION: SACRED FLAME
KADIC ACADEMY
BOULOGNE-BILLAINCOURT, HAUTS-DE-SEINE, ÎLE-DE-FRANCE, FRANCE
THURSDAY, JULY 19TH, 2018, 11:50 AM CEST (UTC +2:00)

BEGIN PHASE ONE: RECON

Athena is in position. Prometheus and Apollo standing by. Objective in sight. Conditions optimal. Mission status green.

The text from Odd might have been significantly cooler if Ulrich had not been standing right next to him as he whispered (barely) into his Apple Watch to compose it. He did not even bother to do more than glance at it as it appeared on the matching watch on his own wrist. Odd had quite literally gone out and purchased six Apple Watches (from three different Apple stores across Paris) to use for communication on the “mission” they were now embarking on. However, because Apple Watches required connected phones to function, he had also purchased six different iPhones, from prepaid carriers that did not gather subscriber information, specifically to be used on the mission. The text Ulrich had just received was a group message to himself, Ulrich, Yumi, and Jeremie.

Or rather, Prometheus, Apollo, Athena, and Zeus. Code names upon which Odd had insisted, and which Jeremie had gleefully agreed to come up with.

The mission was, just as Prometheus had stolen the knowledge of fire from the Gods and brought it to Man, to steal the knowledge of William Dunbar's academic record from the Kadic office and bring it to Jeremie.

Ulrich couldn't stand the Apple Watch, he thought it felt awkward and looked even worse. They were ancient fossils, relics of a bygone technological era of over two years past that had never really been popular even when they were new. He had been surprised to find that Apple still sold them. But Odd had been so excited, it was hard – downright impossible, even – to crush his little dream. So Ulrich, as was his greatest talent, stewed in his distaste in silence.

It's not like, if we're caught, the codenames are going to matter. They're going to ask for our IDs anyway. And they aren't going to look into phone records for a case of stealing a file from a school. Nothing we're doing is even a felony. Ulrich gritted his teeth to prevent himself from shouting what had been on his mind the entire train ride. We are making this so much more than it needs to be. We'll be done in ten minutes. Fifteen minutes tops. He looked to his side at Odd, who was grinning from ear to ear. Discrete, it was not. But even Ulrich had to admit that it warmed just a little bit of his dead, frozen soul.

The codenames weren't that bad.

Yumi – Athena – was casually strolling up the sidewalk to the office. Her job was advance recon and counter-intelligence. Namely, she was going to go and ask to see her own record, so as to distract the staff. With surveillance neutralized, Prometheus would enter the office through the open window, assisted by Apollo, who would then serve as lookout. Prometheus would attain the sacred flame, William's dossier, and then they would withdraw for extraction via Metro. The perfect crime.

Campus was just as Ulrich remembered it. Verdant and immaculate green lawns, proud and stately brown brick buildings, and the distant sounds of children laughing and talking. It was lunch time for the youngest classes, as he recalled. The records office was just at the edge of campus, shaded by a grove of trees near the fence. He and Odd were casually leaning on the fence, just two young men casually enjoying a summer morning. Ulrich made a point of casually glancing at his phone, mostly just to appease Odd, who might otherwise worry he was being too conspicuous. He was almost concerned about how well Odd seemed to know these kinds of operations, but apparently it had been a plot to a film he had once tried to make. Ulrich did not ask how it had turned out. Part of him did not want to know.

His wrist vibrated: a text from Athena. Now entering Olympus.

MISSION CLOCK: +0:01:01

The office was eerily quiet. Not that it had ever been very loud, but something about it felt off. Perhaps she was just nervous. After all, it had almost always been for something bad that Yumi had been here. She took a deep breath before walking up to the receptionist, who was a woman Yumi did not recognize. Of course, there was no longer anyone here that she did recognize, save one P.E. teacher.

“Hello, can I help you?” The receptionist looked up from her computer with a vaguely interested expression.

“Hi,” Yumi said. “My name is Yumi, I used to go here. I, uh, I was wondering if I could see my old student file. There's some records I need to, uh, finalize my citizenship application.”

“What is it that you need specifically?”

“Um. Immunization records,” Yumi pulled straight from her ass. She had no intention of filing for French citizenship; Japanese law forbade dual citizenship and she had little desire to swear allegiance to a country whose government, or even some quasi-governmental entity, was interested in using XANA as a weapon of war.

“I'm not certain that Kadic keeps immunization records,” the receptionist said. She typed for a few moments on her computer, as if she was looking something up. “I don't recall having seen any for this year's class… when was it that you graduated?”

“Uh, 2006,” Yumi said.

The receptionist blinked. “Oh, I have no idea about that long ago. I'll guess we'll have to find out.” She stood up to open the door behind her.

For a moment, Yumi considered being offended that 2006 seemed like ancient history to this lady, who was at least two decades older than she was, but decided against it. She had to play a different angle, for the sake of the mission. Groaning internally at how awkward she was about to sound, instead she said “Oooh, can I come with you?”

The receptionist stared at Yumi blankly.

“I, uh, always wanted to see what it was like in there. Just a… y'know, an old fantasy.” She trailed off. Her face was undoubtedly bright red, and she wanted desperately to punch something.

“I don't see why not,” the receptionist eventually said. Her expression was still blank, but she was clearly unsettled. When she opened the door, which led to a short hallway, Yumi noted she seemed to be standing as far from Yumi as she could.

There were several doors in the hall, which made Yumi nervous for a moment, but thankfully the one labeled “STUDENT RECORDS” was at the end, just as they had presumed. God only knew what the other doors were for – there was only one way to find out. “What are all these rooms?”

“That's the server room, there's a bathroom, uh, that one back there is where we keep the copy paper, and this one is a private meeting room. Uh, what as your last name?”

“Ishiyama.” Yumi's gaze lingered for a moment on the door the receptionist had just pointed out.

“Shouldn't be hard to find, not many I names...” She walked over to a filing cabinet and opened a drawer. Indeed, there did not seem to be many records. “Wow, there's two Ishiyamas. You said Yumi, right?”

Yumi stared at the window. It was smaller than she had presumed. Though not too small, it was perhaps half the size of the other windows at the school, and higher up on the wall. The room itself was taller than she expected, to accommodate several tall shelves that contained boxes and boxes of what were presumably records even older than the ones in the cabinets, or perhaps records of a different type. Overall, the window would be a stumbling block, but not a mission-ending crisis. “Huh? Oh, yeah. Hiroki is my brother.”

“Did he need his too? For citizenship?”

“Oh, he already has his. I just, uh, procrastinated.” Yumi opened the folder, which contained several pages, but just as the receptionist had predicted, no immunization records.

“It would seem so,” said the receptionist, her gaze lingering on Yumi for a moment. “So does that have what you need?”

“No,” Yumi had to admit. “But, uh, can I take a look through this?”

“I don't see why not. But, uh, I'm going to go to lunch. Just leave it on my desk when you're finished.” The receptionist walked away, very quickly. Yumi cast a look out the window – Ulrich and Odd were still in position outside – and then followed her out, making certain to close the door behind her. When Yumi returned to the outer office, the receptionist was long gone.

This was almost too easy.

Prometheus is go for launch, Yumi texted, unsure of what the proper “mission talk” was. She had to admit it was a little fun, but what was the most fun was watching Ulrich struggle with containing his disdain. She had missed her friends far more than she had realized.

MISSION CLOCK: +0:04:22

Out at the fence, Prometheus sprang into action. “Go, go, go,” he whispered to Ulrich, but also grabbed his arm and began to jog towards the gate.

“Slow down, you look like a maniac,” Ulrich said through gritted teeth. Odd stopped in his tracks and Ulrich stumbled on his footing, almost falling over. “Just… casually… walk through the gate.”

“Right,” Odd said. After a beat, he let go of Ulrich's arm. “Casual.”

The two young men strode through the gate, and almost instantly Ulrich felt a wave of nostalgia. Kadic really was a gorgeous place to be, and even though everything seemed smaller, it was no less impressive. There was no one in sight, and the pair meandered off into the grass, under the trees. If anyone asked, they were lost and looking for the office because they needed to get information from the records office. This was what Ulrich was repeating to himself over and over, not that it would help if they were sighted while struggling at the window. No, don't think about that. Think about being lost and needing information from the records office. As he looked carefully at Odd, he seemed to be a little shaky. It felt good that at least they were all nervous.

The window to the records office faced the fence, and was obscured by trees. Honestly, it was Kadic's fault for such embarrassingly poor security. Only the height of the window presented an obstacle, and that was only barely a problem. The room was begging to be broken into. Prometheus and Apollo were all too happy to oblige. Well, perhaps not happy, but they were doing it anyway.

“Apollo, give me a boost.”

“You don't ha- oh, Christ, fine.” Casting a defeated look towards his partner in crime, Apollo stood under the window with his back against the wall, crouched down, and interlaced his hands to offer a step. “You are... go for launch, Prometheus.”

“I've missed you so much,” said Prometheus as he placed a foot in Apollo's hands. “Ready.”

Bracing himself as much as he could, Apollo lifted his arms to push Prometheus up and across the window sill. It wasn't nearly as difficult as he imagined – in fact, Prometheus was almost disturbingly light.

Even more concerning was the crash and the copious swearing as Prometheus landed in the room. “Christ, O- Pro- er, are you alright?” Apollo stood back up and

“Mission status green,” Prometheus said, perhaps a little woozily, from the room.

MISSION CLOCK: +0:06:30

Athena:
I heard that from out here. What was that?
I mean “Status report.”

Apollo gritted his teeth once more. Surely Johan his agent would be proud.

Apollo:
Prometheus did not stick the landing.

He texted from his phone, rather than his watch, hoping that perhaps he would appear to just be somebody leaning on the wall and texting someone. Maybe he could even be a student. An exceptionally physically developed student.

Prometheus:
Window higher and floor harder than expected. Mission still proceeding. Searching for D now.

From outside, Apollo could hear Prometheus whispering his texts to his watch, and then giggle to himself. He said something in English, something about “the D,” and snickered again. “Focus, Prometheus,” Apollo said aloud. The snickering did not cease.

Inside, with a grin plastered on his face, Prometheus looked around in order to find the file cabinet for D names. Though the files were sorted by name, the cabinets themselves for some incomprehensible reason were not. Perhaps they were sorted by frequency of use, or perhaps Jim had set them up and just labeled them with the letters as he remembered them. Either way, it took several precious moments for him to discover the correct cabinet.

Dunbar, Prometheus guessed, would probably be in the bottom drawer of the cabinet. He opened it and was not disappointed – there, tucked in the middle of the dozen or so folders in that drawer, was one clearly labeled DUNBAR, GUILLAUME. Prometheus blinked – had he been spelling it wrong the entire time? But no, there scribbled just barely legibly above the label was another word: “William.” His name had been misspelled on his own student record. Good thing William wasn't here to see this, that was kind of embarrassing.

Apollo:
I hear students. Upper classes prob at lunch. Best wrap it up, I could be seen.

Prometheus glanced at his watch. Time to wrap up indeed. With the sacred flame in hand, Prometheus went to turn, but decided against it. So long as he was here, there were other treasures to be found. He threw open the top drawer and thumbed through until he found what he sought: the file labeled DELLA ROBBIA, ODD. Interestingly, the one immediately next to it was DELMAS, ELISABETH. “Why not,” Prometheus said to himself, and snagged both folders.

Apollo:
Now.

“Get your panties untied Ulrich, jeez,” Prometheus said, as loudly as he dared risk. “I've got it, I just-”

Prometheus stared at the window from whence he had entered. The window was only just at the reach of his fingertips. He couldn't even do one pull-up, even if he could get a grasp on the window sill. “Fuck.”

Apollo:
You can't reach the window, can you?

Prometheus:
Nope. Athena, can u assist?

Athena:
I'm keeping watch out here. Move a cabinet and climb on it?

The closest cabinet to the window was three meters away. He placed both his hands on it and, summoning all the strength in his svelte little body, shoved it forward. It promptly fell over, drawers shooting out and sending a sound like a cannon out from the office. It was still nowhere near the window.

“Fuck!” Prometheus and Apollo shouted at the same time.

Prometheus looked at the window, then looked back at the other door. There was no longer any time, and no longer the option for delicacy. Taking a deep breath, he bolted to the door and threw it open and ran down the hall. “COMEONYUMILET'SGO,” he shouted as he continued running through the office, past his teammate and out the door. Pausing for only just a moment to process what she had just seen, Athena got up and ran after him.

“GOGOGOCOMEON,” he shouted again as he passed by Apollo.

“I can't run!” Apollo shouted, but he gave his best attempt and jogged with spirit after his fellow conspirators. They reached the gate, chests heaving and beads of sweat dripping down their faces, a minute or so of pure agony and fear later.

Prometheus turned. There was still not a soul to be seen. “Well… alright. We… we did it, I think.” He looked down at the folders in his hand and then at his friends. “Now let's get the fuck out of here.”

–

MISSION CLOCK: +0:58:12
BEGIN PHASE TWO: TRACKING

“So… there's nothing here,” Jeremie said, placing the folder down on the table for everyone to see. There was only one page, and most of that single page was covered in black ink. Visible were William's name, date of birth, date of matriculation, and date of graduation. “This file contains only the bare legal minimum, which isn't much, because Kadic is a private school. Compare this with Odd's, who was very smart to take his as a comparison.”

Odd grinned and placed his hands on his hips as if to boast.

“He took it because he wanted to snoop,” Ulrich said, nudging Odd on the shoulder. Odd nudged back.

“You're just jealous I thought of it.”

Jeremie set Odd's folder on the table next to William's. There were several pages in it, including Odd's personal information, transcripts of his grades, evaluations from teachers, disciplinary citations (this was by far the thickest section), and most importantly, emergency contact information that detailed the names, phone numbers, and workplaces of his parents. “As you can see, Odd's has several different documents. William's appears to have only the cover page with biographical information, and all but the most basic information has been censored.”

“Delmas,” Ulrich said with contempt. “Making sure no one can get to William before he does.”

“Is there anything that we can gain from this?” Aelita picked up William's page and stared at it, as if trying to make out words from underneath the ink. “I think I can almost make out the name of his previous school here.”

“This was obviously an amateur censoring job. They appear to have used regular black marker, not even permanent.” Jeremie had moved behind his wife, looking over her shoulder at the document. “And this wasn't censored by the government, either. They would be legally obligated to denote it as class- well, I suppose maybe legal obligations don't really matter here. But still… that's not the sense I get. I've seen plenty government-censored documents in my time.”

“I'm almost certain this says his father's name is James,” Aelita said, squinting.

“There could be a million James Dunbars in the world. Finding him on name alone would be just like finding William,” Jeremie said. He turned away from the document and walked towards the window. “I was so excited that this would help us. I can't believe we were foiled so easily.”

Aelita held the page up so that the light hit it and stared at it with renewed vigor. She could make out fragments of an address. “Could you do something with some parts of an address? It's 54 something… maybe Cork? Or, no, I think it says Cock. 54 Cock Lane.”

Jeremie whipped his head around with wide eyes. “That's a street in the City of London,” he said.

“Are you familiar with it? You seem sure,” Aelita said, raising an eyebrow. In the background, Odd was laughing.

“Well, the name… that's, um, also an English word for, well- be quiet, Odd- anyway, yeah, I just happen to know of the street.” Jeremie's face was slightly pink, and he was casting a stern glance in Odd's direction. “But yes, I can do a great deal with that. That tells me that James Dunbar lives, or at least lived, in London. And not just London but the City of London, the medieval city center that now serves as a financial services hub. And if he lives there, he almost certainly works there. Any number of the firms there very likely have employee directories on their servers, and even if they aren't files that the public can access, they're still files I can access.”

Jeremie returned to the table and opened his laptop. It was the one he had used in middle school, and using it was like coming home. As old and slow as it was, he did not even need to look at the keys or even the trackpad. His hands knew everything from muscle memory. It was like riding a bike. “Listen, everyone,” he said, not looking away from the screen. “I'm going to need some digging. I would appreciate it if maybe you… went into another room. Not the living room, maybe a bedroom or something. And Aelita, could you close the blinds, please?”

Aelita took a deep breath. “Alright, but I'm coming back for you in an hour to make sure you eat some lunch.” She patted Jeremie on the shoulder as she walked over to close the blinds, and once more as she walked by him on the way out of the kitchen. “Stay safe in there.”

Jeremie looked up at his wife and met her eyes. “Always.”

She smiled, but turned quickly and took Yumi by the hand as she walked into her bedroom. The apartment was silent, save for the sound of tapping on keys.

MISSION CLOCK: +2:15:46

It was typical of Jeremie's luck, and perhaps both a symbolic slap to the face and a gift of divine providence, that Mr. James Dunbar of 54 Cock Lane, London, England, turned out to be a stockbroker. There was only one place stockbrokers in London did business, and it was the same place that Jeremie did – the London Stock Exchange.

Once he finally discovered that that was where he needed to be, getting into the Stock Exchange servers was easy. After all, he had written the directory software himself, as well as most of the other software. It was still just past 2 in the afternoon in London, not too far removed from lunchtime, but agonizingly far from the end of the day, and the security team wouldn't be at peak efficiency. Most attacks happened at night, anyway. Even if they were on the lookout, it wasn't like Jeremie wasn't anywhere he wasn't allowed to be. He had broad access to nearly every server and system, ostensibly for testing purposes or to repair vulnerabilities or bugs. The only peculiarity would be that he was in the system while on family leave, but it wasn't like his coworkers didn't know he was a workaholic. This was just typical Jeremie, “absolute madman,” as they might say.

Stockbrokers who were licensed to trade at the Exchange had to give their name and information. It wasn't hard at all to get into that database, which wasn't even particularly secure because it was just names and contact information – almost nothing you couldn't get from a business card, or a skilled Google search. The database informed him that there were three James Dunbars with licenses, but only one whose firm was listed as Dunbar & Associates, the very same firm whose corporate filings had indicated a President domiciled on Cock Lane, as Jeremie's searches had discovered. Obviously Mr. Dunbar was doing quite well for himself as the head of his own firm, even if he wasn't doing well enough to get an apartment on a more dignified street.

What Jeremie really needed from the database was not a name or a firm, but a personal email address, which James must have given when registering to trade on the Exchange. Jeremie could have easily guessed any number of addresses from the firm's web domain, but he could only be certain of one that he regularly used by getting the information from the database. If Jeremie was truly lucky, Mr. Dunbar would have considered the Exchange important enough to use his real email address, rather than the one he used for more general work purposes. He was likely to be an important man with quite a deal of correspondence, so it was almost certain that he would have to have another, more secret email for messages that were of a greater importance.

It would appear, however, that Jeremie's luck had run out. The email address listed was “[email protected],” which was distinctly impersonal. But it was a start. Because if Mr. Dunbar was both a truly shrewd businessman and one who had no indiscretions to fear, and he almost certainly was, he very likely would have his secret email address linked to his work address, so that emails sent to the secret one would also show up in his main inbox, to ensure that nothing escaped his attention. Establishing such a link was done by setting parameters through the IMAP protocol, an absolutely ancient system that had remained essentially unchanged since email was invented. It took Jeremie less than fifteen minutes to whip up a worm that could get into the dunbarandassocs.co.uk email server and find out what email addresses were linked to “james.dunbar.”

There were several, most of which were probably just done for just-in-case redirection purposes that Mr. Dunbar likely didn't even know about - “president@dunbarandassocs,” “ceo@dunbarandassocs,” and “james@dunbarandassocs” among them. But there was one that Jeremie knew could not have simply been thrown in by forward-thinking engineers - “[email protected].” Personally identifiable to those who knew him by the initials, but bearing the distinctly personal touch not of his own year of birth, but that of his son. Gone, but not forgotten.

Realizing his palms were sweating, Jeremie took a moment to breathe. It had been a long time since he had felt this… well, this excited. He was back into the swing of things in a way he hadn't been in years. This was his natural habitat: a hot keyboard under his hands, the Internet laid before him like an open book, and objectives falling like dominoes, one by one. God, this felt good. This felt fun. Even as simple as it was, sneaking around his own databases, writing simple bots to snoop around wide open email servers, it made him feel alive.

With the hacking done, that was the easy part out of the way. The hard part was getting Dunbar to talk. His fingers moved much slower in composing the email than they had in navigating databases.

MISSION CLOCK +2:39:36
BEGIN PHASE THREE: CONTACT

From: Scipio Africanus <[email protected]>
To: J D <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu 19 Jul 2018 15:29:36 CEST
Subject: William

Dear Mr. Dunbar,

I implore you to give this email more than just a passing glance. My name is Jeremie Belpois. I was once a friend of your son's at school. Myself and several others are trying to find him. I'm not sure if he ever spoke of me to you, but perhaps the name Yumi sounds familiar – she is one of those of us trying to find him.

I know William has been missing for a very long time. You have been searching for longer than we have. Maybe you've stopped by now. I don't want to re-open old wounds whose pain I cannot even imagine. But I need you to understand that it is imperative that your son is found. He is being hunted by forces whose power cannot even be estimated, who want to use him for purposes that I cannot explain in this email without sounding even more insane than I already do. But we need to find him before they do. If they find William, the whole world will be in danger.

We know that William disappeared in July of 2007, and that he did so because he was afraid. But we know that he had the chance to at least get some affairs in order, and any information you have on where he might have gone – any information at all – could be the difference between life and death. Not even just that of your son, but that of us all.

I can only ask from the bottom of my heart that you help us, and apologize that it took us this long to realize something had happened. Your son is far more important, and far more brave, than the world ever gave him credit for. It is our sincere hope to deliver him back to you, safe and sound.

Sincerely,
Jeremie Belpois

Jeremie had debated for some time over whether or not to use his real name, but he decided it was his only chance to appear genuine – after all, he could easily be Project Carthage trying to get information from the exact same source. Perhaps they had already contacted him. Perhaps, Jeremie suddenly worried as his stomach dropped to his knees, he was already on their side. But worrying would solve nothing. All he could do now is wait. As a post script, he included the number for the iPhone Odd had gotten for him, in case Dunbar wanted to talk instead of send a message. Taking a deep breath and sending a quick prayer to whoever might be inclined to listen, Jeremie hit send.

And he waited. But he did not wait long.

From: J D <[email protected]>
To: Scipio Africanus <[email protected]>
Sent: Thu 19 Jul 2018 14:46:06 BST
Subject: Re: William

My son is dead. Doa not ever contact me about him again. I don't know how you got this email address, but if you ever contacnt it again, expect a call from the police. (How nice of you to provide your number for exactly sduch a purpose.)

You are right, you do sound insane. And oif you really were a friend of William's, you insult his memory by sending me this rubbish. I don't knorw what the point of this was, whether it's a prank or whether you're just sick, but either way, it's nort going to get you anywhere.

Let a father grieve in peace, and let William's spirit rest undisaturbed. Go fight your war somewhere else, General Africanus. Go bother some Carthaginians and leave me alone.

Piss off,

James Dunbar

-Sent from my iPhone

Several things struck Jeremie's attention, but the most obvious was the final line. Perhaps Mr. Dunbar was just an avid student of history, and given how much Jeremie knew of the man, that could easily be the case, but the coincidence struck him as odd, or at least noteworthy. “Scipio Africanus,” whose name Jeremie had borrowed for this particular pseudonymous email address, was of course the Roman general who defeated the city-state of Carthage in the Punic Wars. He had borrowed the name from Franz Hopper, who had also been a student of the Punic Wars in his fight against a different Carthage. Jeremie had used the name when he created the account – one of the first ones he had used for his more illicit activities – because it sounded cool and threatening, and he had used it to send the email because it was not one of the accounts he had surrendered as part of his plea deal. Far too nostalgic.

It was possible, perhaps even likely, that Mr. Dunbar had known that and simply made a comment relating to the name. But nothing in his life recently seemed to work that way. Nothing that touched Carthage ever did, and as he had noted to himself earlier, it was entirely possible that Project Carthage had already spoken to him. And if that was the case, it was just as possible that Mr. Dunbar wasn't fond of them.

Beyond the possibly cryptic reference to Carthage, what caught Jeremie's attention were the typos. Obviously, Mr. Dunbar was upset, and seeing as how he was typing on an iPhone, he did not blame him for his thumbs slipping. Still, it seemed unusual for a man of Mr. Dunbar's stature and standing to leave them. Although… certainly if he was typing on an iPhone, his words would have autocorrected? Unless, of course, they were not errors at all. All the typos were additions of extra letters, and when he took each extra letter, he found that they made a word: A-N-D-O-R-R-A. The small country between France and Spain, high in the mountains, known for being a tax haven largely free from regulation.

“Aelita?” Jeremie was shaking as he stood up from his computer and called out towards the bedrooms. “AELITA?”

Not only Aelita but Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich poked their heads out of their rooms and then sprinted into the kitchen. “What's happening? What's going on?” Aelita ran over to Jeremie and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Talk to me.”

“Andorra,” Jeremie said simply. “William's father told me Andorra.”

“Andorra… in the mountains, far away from everything, small, but full of swarms of tourists that one person could get easily lost amongst,” Aelita said.

“And it's outside the European Union,” Jeremie added. “William had the same idea I did.”

“Very Catholic,” Yumi said. “If he was serious about that church thing...” The entire gang was looking around at each other, all wide eyed. An electric energy had permeated the atmosphere and everyone seemed alight.

“Are… are we going on a road trip?” Odd looked out the window.

“No, we can't just all march there, we would lead them right there and even a country as small as Andorra can't be searched by just six people,” Jeremie said. “We'll need to get something more specific, search what we can online, I'll see what I can find my way into...”

“Jeremie, come back to Earth, you can't possibly hope to just hack your way to-” Aelita had a stern look on her face for a moment, but as if she had been slapped it suddenly fell. “Jeremie… we can't just waltz through all of Andorra to find one person out of a hundred thousand, but… I bet the Supercomputer could.”

The electricity in the air turned to lightning, and everyone in the room switched from excitement to reverence, perhaps almost fear.

“Aelita, we can't...” Jeremie's voice was almost impossible to hear.

“Odd was there for two days straight and nothing happened. And what is for them at the Factory? It isn't worth anything to them without William. We need the Supercomputer. It's the most powerful tool we have.” Aelita walked over to the window and stared out over the city. “We have to go back. We have to wake up the Supercomputer.” She turned back, her eyes wide. “What do you say? We took a vote to shut it down. We'll take a vote to turn it back on. All in favor?”

Slowly, some shakily, but all eventually, five hands rose into the air.

MISSION CLOCK +3:09:14
BEGIN PHASE FOUR: SEARCH AND RESCUE

Chapter Text

PART II: ALL THAT WE LOVE
CHAPTER III: WALDO

The atmosphere around the kitchen table was charged, as if there was a bolt of lightning poised to strike at any moment. It even seemed as some of them had hair standing on edge, Jeremie in particular. His hands were resting atop his now-closed laptop, fidgeting just enough to be noticeable. It could have been shadows, but it seemed light there might be sweat stains on his chest and under his arms. Not that sweating was unforgivable, especially given the unrelenting summer heat, but Jeremie was obviously affected by something. Was it his working to find William's father? Probably, but he hadn't been shaking until Aelita had called for them to restart the Supercomputer.

Yumi looked over to Ulrich, and then at Jeremie. Ulrich followed her eyes and looked towards Jeremie as well, his expression unclear but perhaps worried. Yumi herself did not look pleased either, but her hand had gone up just the same as the rest of theirs had. Her hands were now crossed over her chest, and her expression was the one that was the most openly sour of all those sitting at the table. “Jeremie, you seem a little on edge,” she finally said.

“We… we need to be careful. I understand that this is a very powerful tool, but… we have no idea what they could have done with it,” Jeremie said. He took several deep breaths and ran his hands through his hair.

“I thought you said you locked the Supercomputer down?” Odd, in stark contrast to Yumi and Jeremie, seemed as chipper as ever. His had been the first hand to shoot up.

“Well… yes,” Jeremie admitted. “But we don't know. Going back there is like walking into a hornet's nest. Maybe the hornets are sleeping, or dead, but it's a big risk to take.”

“You raised your hand,” Ulrich said. “We all did. I don't see any reason for us to have second thoughts. We don't have the luxury of time.”

“On the contrary,” Aelita said, walking over to her husband and placing her hand atop his. “If we have the Supercomputer, we have all the time in the world.” She offered a smirk. Odd returned it, and Ulrich uttered perhaps half a chuckle. “But the truth is, I don't really see any other options. We could hire a team of fifteen thousand private investigators, or we could use one computer. Do we want to find William or not? I mean, combing through Internet traffic is what the Supercomputer was built for.”

Jeremie blinked and whipped his head around to face his wife. “Wait, what do you mean? It was built to stop Project Carthage, wasn't it? What does that have to do with Internet traffic?”

Aelita's expression was blank for a moment. “Jeremie… did I ever show you… hang on a moment.” Without even a breath, Aelita bounded from the kitchen and into her bedroom, leaving the assembled warriors at the table to look at each other with equally bewildered faces. It would be several minutes before Aelita would return, bearing a small black book in her hand. There was no writing on the cover, and it was bent with yellowing pages splayed.

Jeremie cocked his head and stared at the book that Aelita was carrying almost reverently in her hands. “What... is that?”

October 10^th, 2012

The letter had come in a violently bright pink envelope, addressed to both “Mme. Aelita Schaeffer” and “the estate of Mr. W. Franz H. Schaeffer.” It had given her pause to see her father's name on paper, even as strangely worded as it was. Even stranger were the contents of the letter, which informed Aelita that the property she owned had been condemned and was to be razed. The address was not familiar, and it took her longer than it should have to realize that the letter was referring to the Hermitage.

It had never occurred to Aelita that she owned the house, and suddenly she wondered who had been paying property taxes for the nearly twenty years it had been abandoned. It would turn out that her father had paid them in advance when he purchased the property in the eighties – a quick look into city records indicated that even after so many decades of withdrawals and fines for failing to upkeep the lawn, there was still a credit of several thousand Euros in the account. Where her father had gotten the money, she preferred not to think about.

Further research revealed that her father had left a will, in which he had established a trust fund that had been sitting in a bank, untouched and gathering interest, for quite some time. She had chastised herself for never looking before, for being so quick to discard all the painful memories and forgetting everything, but at the same time, it had been a comfort. There were legacies from her father that were not just war and paranoia and death. Beyond simple money, her father had left behind a testament to his love and desire to care for her, and even their home and all the memories contained within it. There in black in white, on the paper in the file Aelita had found, were the words: “To my daughter, Aelita, I leave all of my possessions, including the home in which she was raised.”

According to the state, her father had died in 1996 – by order of a judge, because they had never found a body, after nearly two years of searching. Just as Aelita herself had been. Aelita had just finished two years of jumping through legal hoops to prove that Aelita Stones, who she had been living as since her awakening from the Supercomputer, was indeed the same person as Aelita Schaeffer, who had been missing since 1994. She had done it because enrolling in college, and entering the workforce, would be a lot easier as a real person than it would be as an identity crafted by twelve year olds. Never did she imagine, or even think, that assuming the name she had once forgotten would have an effect like this.

The story Aelita told the court and the police was that she remembered waking up in a hospital in Canada with no memory of life before, and was raised by people who she had known to be her parents. Brain damage had caused Aelita to lose years of development and she had spent years in rehab, before going back and taking years of school over again. Jeremie had forged notarized sworn statements from her alleged parents “Philippe and Renee Stones,” hospital records, even school yearbooks to prove to the courts that her story was true. Who knew what kinds of records he slipped into Canadian databases for authentication. She hadn't asked, because she was afraid to know. In retrospect, had she known what Jeremie had done and what he was capable of, she would have stopped him. Creating Aelita Stones just so she could be Aelita Schaffer was probably what had pushed him over the edge.

Eventually, the court accepted her case, and Aelita Stones assumed the identity of Aelita Schaffer. The police had been confused as to why she insisted on not pursuing the obvious kidnapping case but she insisted she wanted to leave the past in the past and that any trail was long cold. Still, Canadian authorities would go to find Philippe and Renee Stones and discover they themselves were missing. Perhaps they were still looking for them. Aelita did not want to think about that, either. No, what was on her mind today was her true father. What all that wrangling with the courts had earned her was a letter telling her that her childhood home was going to be destroyed, and what faint memories she had to claim were about to be torn from the Earth and thrown in a dumpster.

The day she went to the Hermitage to finally collect her inheritance felt just like the day her father had truly died.

When she arrived at the Hermitage, the dumpsters had already been set up. Several bright pink posters were on the doors and walls, all of which read “CONDEMNED” or “UNSAFE.” The house was quite a bit more decrepit than it had been when she had last visited, which was not too long after they had shut down the Supercomputer. Six years, Aelita realized as she walked up to the door with leaves crunching under her feet. There were no longer any windows intact, and there were two holes in the roof that Aelita could see. So much paint had chipped from the walls that there were now more places unpainted than there were ones that still had color. Very helpful individuals had come along over the years and added colorful graffiti to make up for the lost paint, most of it illegible to Aelita's eyes. Decades of people had come here to make their mark, and as Aelita entered the house, she realized that they had just as much of a claim on this house as she did, if not more. They had been coming here for years, and this was her second visit in almost a decade. The most overwhelming feeling she had as she crossed the threshold was guilt.

Whatever possessions there were for Aelita to claim were long gone, save years of trash, scattered waterlogged papers, and bits of wood and insulation on the floor that very well might have been the work of actual animals tearing through the walls. She had only brought a single bag with her, knowing there wouldn't be much for her to take. What she was really here for was just one last look. One last chance to remember.

The first few times she had been here, it had been scary. Images of wolves ran through her mind for a moment, but she dispelled them. There were no wolves anymore, and there never would be again. Even after all the years, she could still make out the lighter spot on the wall where there had once been a piano. The distant sound of piano notes seemed to play in her head, and Aelita allowed them to stay.

There were a few rooms that Aelita had never really bothered to look in before. The kitchen was, of course, in the same state as everything else, but she figured she might spend a moment there while she still had the chance. All the appliances were still there: a fridge, a range, the microwave was even still on the counter. It was strange how, more than almost anything else, their design revealed the age of the building. It was like walking into a museum for the early nineties, albeit an abandoned museum. She considered taking the microwave with her; it was small enough to carry and even if it didn't work, it could serve as a sort of decoration. But to be honest, she rather felt like the entire place was unsanitary, so she decided against it. Still, it have her pause to think about how she could have taken it, because it was her microwave, in her house.

In the dining room, or what Aelita was pretty sure had been the dining room, because there was no longer any furniture to recognize it as such, there were a few books scattered on the floor. They appeared to have been water damaged, so there was no way of telling what they had once been. She knelt down and tried to get a closer look, but there was no use. There was almost nothing in this place that was even worth looking at. Suddenly, more than guilty, Aelita just felt annoyed. She had let nostalgia get the better of her. But there was one last place she had never been, and she couldn't just leave now. She had never entered her father's bedroom.

It was upstairs, just down the hall from her own room, from which she had already taken everything she wanted years ago. She did not bother to look. Her father's door was closed, the only door in the house that was. When she went to open it, she found out why it was – the door wouldn't budge. Perhaps it had gotten water damage and warped in its frame, and generations of vandals had never bothered with it. But with the demolition of the house nigh, it wasn't as if there was any point in being delicate. Aelita took several steps back and then, with her body turned so her shoulder was facing forward, ran into the door, which fell to the ground with Aelita with it.

“Son of a bitch,” Aelita groaned as she got up, her eyes itching from dust and wood floating in the air. Her shoulder hurt like hell, and she immediately regretted her decision. She was probably actually injured; her arm didn't move like it ought to have. “Great,” she muttered. And for what had she dislocated a joint? Another sparse room. However, this room was remarkably less vandalized from all the others, save from the vandalization from Mother Nature herself. There were brown stains on the ceiling and along the bottom of the walls – telltale signs of flooding. The carpet was long dry, but Aelita took shallow breaths in fear of who knew what kinds of mold could be lurking around.

Her father's bed was still there and still had sheets. They were thrown randomly upon the mattress, but she had a feeling that was just because her father hadn't felt like making the bed, rather than vandals. There was not a single wall in the room that did not have a bookshelf, which both surprised Aelita and did not. She knew her father liked books, but she thought that all of the ones he had owned were in the study. She and Jeremie had already gone through those and taken a few, and it intrigued her to know what books her father kept for personal use rather than for business in his study. Most of the bottom shelves were long lost, but the ones on top were still in serviceable condition. The one closest to the bed seemed to be novels, as far as Aelita could tell, mysteries and science fiction. He owned every Asimov book there was, which struck her as odd, considering her father's creation obviously had no regard for the Laws of Robotics. And as she scanned the shelf, she noted that there were no political thrillers to be seen.

Just as she went to turn and look at another shelf, one book caught her eye. The spine was faded and she had glanced over it at first, but the light caught it and gold lettering glinted at her. It said “Aelita.” She wondered if her father had written her name on it, but as far as she could tell, that was the title of the book. The author's name was Tolstoy, but she was pretty sure it wasn't the same Tolstoy who wrote War and Peace. She had always presumed that one of her parents had simply invented her name, but perhaps it had come from this book. Aelita pulled the book from the shelf and opened to a random page, but to tell the truth, old science fiction always seemed to her like it was trying too hard, and something about this one felt kind of political. Whatever inspiration her father had gained from this book would just have to be something she would never understand.

She went to put the book back, but noticed that there was something else in its spot, as if it had been stuffed behind the book she had pulled out. It was jet black, bound in leather, and had no writing on the spine. Setting Aelita on the bed, she grabbed the black book and opened it. The writing was faded, but even just seeing the first few words grabbed Aelita's interest far more than the previous book had.

The first five words scrawled in the book, in brown ink that had had once been black, on yellow paper that had once been white, were “The Diary of Waldo Schaeffer.”

July 19^th, 2018

“You never told me they demolished the Hermitage,” Jeremie said. He sat at the kitchen table in Elisabeth's cousin's apartment, looking up at his wife with wide, astonished eyes.

“Well I didn't think it mattered,” Aelita said. “It just seemed like… something between my father and I.” Her voice was quiet, and she stared at the book for a moment before snapping her head back up.

“Was there anything else of value there?”

“I took this, the Aelita book, and some papers I found in a lockbox in his closet like his birth certificate and stuff, a photo that I think is of his parents, and a broken watch. But this was the only thing I took with me here.” Aelita sat down at the table and looked around at the gang that had all sat down to hear her story. “I still own the land, even though there's no house on it. You know, without the house, the value skyrocketed. It's actually pretty valuable real estate. I've gotten a few offers to buy it, but I couldn't bear to-”

Jeremie cleared his throat gently, as if to remind his wife that there were other things to talk about.

“Right,” Aelita said. “Anyway, so this is my father's first diary, before he started recording them on the Supercomputer. There's almost twenty years in here, it's part theorizing, part politics, and partly an operator's manual for the Supercompter. The last entry is in December of 1993, so it doesn't mention XANA or the Return to the Past because he hadn't discovered it yet, but he detailed the step-by-step process he used to get rid of Project Carthage. It mentions several functions that we never even knew were there. It also mentions exactly what Project Carthage did that drove my father to stop them at any cost.”

“Well don't leave us hanging,” Odd shouted. “Spill the beans!”

Aelita smirked. “So we all know that Project Carthage was a program designed to 'intercept enemy communications.' The project took place over several years, and was already essentially over by 1994 when they came after my father. I'm still not sure when, exactly, it started, but I think it might have even been in the seventies. At that time, the Internet was still brand new, and for mostly US military or academic use. The idea of a global, instantaneous communications network was still a pipe dream. At the very beginning of the project, the idea was to be able to disrupt enemy – that is, Russian – communications with directed electromagnetic pulses. But very quickly, they caught on to the Internet because they thought it might have some future relevance.” Aelita chuckled. “Little did they know how right they were.”

“Wait, the Russians? Carthage was after the Russians?” Ulrich's jaw had dropped.

“Soviets, I should clarify,” Aelita said. “But yes. Who else would have been the enemy then? This was the Cold War. And while my father doesn't really talk about it in the diary, I think that might have been the reason he joined. My father was German, and I don't think he was very fond of what the Soviets were doing in East Germany. Mostly he talks about being guilty that he joined the project at all, but there had to have been a reason. Anyway, this was where my father was first assigned to work, in the part of the project that dealt with the Internet. Who here, besides Jeremie, has any idea of how the Internet works?”

The table was quiet. “There are tubes involved somewhere,” Odd said.

“No,” Aelita said. “The Internet is a network made up of networks. Most of the brunt work done coordinating traffic on the Internet is done by the cable companies, who operate their own networks. It is the connection between those networks that we think of as the Internet. It's called the Internet backbone, and traffic along the backbone is coordinated through what are called 'core routers.' My father built a computer that was capable of tapping into the Internet backbone and acting as a core router. While we wouldn't have recognized it as such at the time, that same computer would later be re-engineered into the Supercomputer.”

“You know, I always used to wonder who paid the Factory's Internet bill,” Yumi said.

“The taxpayers of France do,” Aelita said. “Not only does the Supercomputer have a direct fiber-optic connection to the very backbone of the Internet, the Supercomputer is one of the computers that makes the Internet run altogether. Or at least, it can be, if you flip the right switch. One of the major points of my father's idea was that the computer he built would only act as such when necessary, to avoid detection. It isn't technically legitimate, the engineers who built the rest of the backbone don't know that it's there, but then, with such a widely distributed, decentralized system, there isn't really a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate.”

“So the Supercomputer is capable of tapping into the highest-level Internet communications,” Jeremie said. “I see now why you mentioned using it to find William. If he's online somewhere...”

“Bingo,” Aelita said. “But I've only gotten started. The Supercomputer has another function. You guys might already know that every computer and every website as an address, called its IP address, that is a unique series of numbers that identifies it. When you type a web address, like Google dot com or whatever, a server somewhere has to translate those letters into Google's numeric IP address, and then back, so you can view the page. They're called DNS servers, and they regulate the names of everything on the Internet. At the very top of the system are what are called the DNS root name servers, which among other things, tell the other servers what domains – the things after the dot, like dot com or dot org – are valid. As such, the root name servers are the fundamental core of the system, and no exchange of information can take place over the Internet without the involvement of the root name servers. As far as anyone is aware, there are only thirteen of these servers, lettered A through M. But-”

“Aelita, are you telling me...” Jeremie was wide-eyed and paler than usual. He appeared to be in awe, afraid, and excited all at the same time.

“The Supercomputer is number fourteen,” Aelita said simply. “He named it DNS root server X.”

“Your father… your father hacked the DNS root zone?” Jeremie leaped up from the table with his hands on his head. His glasses fell from his face and he made no effort to pick them up. “He… he…”

Aelita raised a hand to silence her husband, and slowly his breathing began to regulate and he sank back into his chair. “So, to put it all together, the Supercomputer is capable of coordinating and monitoring the highest-level traffic on the entire Internet. In fact, it is entirely capable of overriding the other core routers and DNS root name servers and monitoring all of it. That was what Project Carthage became. Combined with its original ability to override conventional, terrestrial communication via overloading wires with electric impulses, or create links in systems that did not originally exist through those same electric impulses, the system my father built had, and the Supercomuter has inherited, the ability to monitor or disrupt almost any kind of electric communication system on the planet.”

“So why did Franz Hopper turn away from what he built? Was he wary of all that surveillance? Did he think it was too much power for the government to hold?” Ulrich was leaning forward now, waiting on Aelita's every word.

“No. Well, I mean, he probably was worried about that too, but that isn't what drove him over the edge.” Aelita grinned; they were getting into the parts of the diary that interested her the most. “Much of my father's work was done in the earlier parts of the program. The entries about all those things I just told you about were all from the early to mid eighties. For a few years he starts hypothesizing about quantum computing, which he had talked about a little bit here and there throughout the diary. And he really gets interested in artificial intelligence. The systems that he had built had gotten so complicated that it was difficult for a single person, or even a team of people, to parse any of the information into something meaningful. So there's a really interesting entry where he first starts to hypothesize about being able to go inside a computer to operate the systems directly, where a virtual operating environment could manipulate and parse the data in real time, right in front of the user. And then he comes up with this concept of 'artificial, natural algorithms' that could process the information and put into terms humans can understand, or even operate the systems autonomously, monitoring communications and determining where and when action is needed on its own. And while he runs out of room to write in the diary before he begins work on the Supercomputer in earnest, we have obviously seen the fruits of both of those ideas.”

“Uh, Aelita,” Jeremie said softly. “You were telling us about-”

“Right,” Aelita said. “So, anyway, after he spends a few years mainly writing about his theories, around 1989, my father starts to worry. This had always been a military project, of course, but by now I'm in the picture, I'm about seven at this point, and my father is really beginning to be more concerned about family than anything else. He's older, mellowed out, less concerned about politics. And more importantly, the Soviet Union is beginning to show signs of strain. My father begins to think that they really don't need the Project anymore. But the Project leaders are still going full steam ahead. In fact, with the work on communications systems pretty much done, they had another idea. Basically, what they wanted to do was be able to infiltrate global nuclear launch systems. They wanted to be able to use the Supercomputer to control and launch the nuclear weapons of any country, including allies.”

Aelita paused. No one at the table spoke. Some blinked. Jeremie stared. Taking a deep breath, she continued on. “My father wanted nothing to do with this. So he told them that he was leaving, and in the days leading up to it, he mentions that they didn't want him to leave. So he did the only thing he could think to do, he ran. He and my mother, who also worked on the Project. They fled to Switzerland and lived there for a few years, but you all know what happened. But what is most important is that when my parents fled, they took the computer my father built with them.”

“They physically removed the computer? How… how big was it? How is that possible?” Jeremie's jaw was on the floor.

“From what I gathered, my parents and a few other people cut the wires and just lifted the thing out of there. They weren't trying to be careful or delicate with it, just get it out of their hands. I don't know what happened to the people who helped them, but they put it in a truck and my father, uh, 'borrowed' it. Got through the border on military credentials in the middle of the night. But then, y'know, my mother was kidnapped, and from that point on, my father gets very paranoid. We move back to France, which my father figured was the least likely place they would look because he had already been there. And he's gotten so paranoid by the end of the diary that he literally buys the Factory, which had already been abandoned at this point, builds the lab in it, and then puts the computer back in it so that he can use it to destroy what was left of Project Carthage. He got very worried that they were trying to rebuild, so it consumed him to both erase what was left of Carthage on the computer he had taken as well as seeking out and erasing traces elsewhere on the network. Apparently the same cable that Project Carthage used to hook into the Internet backbone ran under the Seine, so my father just spliced it in. That's when he begins to re-engineer it to be our Supercomputer, and as far as I can tell, he designed Lyoko not only to test his theories about a virtual operating environment but to literally overwrite Project Carthage's data and turn it into a format that only he could operate.” Aelita took a deep breath. “So before we go back and wake it up, I wanted you to know that truth. We can use the Supercomputer to defeat Project Carthage, just like my father did, but it is also the very embodiment of its work and legacy. It is Carthage.”

“Wait, wait, wait, your father… bought the Factory? And then built the Lab? How… how did he afford all this?” Ulrich looked around at everyone, trying to gauge if they were all as excited as he was. They were.

“Project Carthage paid very well. Unethical things often do,” Aelita said. “But how did you think that lab got there? Obviously Project Carthage didn't put it there, how would my father have been on the run if he was using the same lab he was running from?” She paused. “Would it freak you out too much if I told you that I technically own it now? The Factory? I inherited it.”

Jeremie fell backwards in his chair and onto the floor. “Is there anything else you haven't told me?” He spoke to the ceiling in a monotone voice, the excitement having apparently blown a fuse or two.

“Well, my father did leave me a significant sum of money, in addition to paying the property taxes for everything like fifty years in advance. But I've mainly used the money to pay for the upkeep of the Factory so it doesn't fall into too much disrepair and get demolished like the Hermitage did. I've gotten a few offers to sell it, and I've thought about it, but I just worry about anyone finding the Lab. Not that it really mattered until this all started, but I guess a part of me really is just nostalgic,” Aelita said.

She walked over to Jeremie and picked him up, then handing him his glasses from the floor and patting his head. “But, anyway, like I said. I wanted you all to know the truth. I want you all to understand that even without XANA, the Supercomputer is a weapon of war. But it is also a powerful tool, and probably our best chance of finding William. I doubt that he's been able to keep himself completely isolated all this time. He must be online somewhere.”

“Alright, so what's the game plan?” Jeremie was rubbing the back of his head, which had hit the floor. “Do you already know how to use these functions your father spoke of? I don't recall ever seeing them while snooping around.”

“That's just it. They aren't directly accessible, like files just sitting in the Supercomputer. Because they're part of Project Carthage, my father integrated them into the core programming of Lyoko so that only he would know how to access them. While I can't be certain, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to go into Sector 5 and use the terminal there. I think, with my Key to Lyoko, I should be able to access the functions. They were previously part of the data that XANA restricted access to, but with him gone, they should be available to me.”

“So… we're going to use Project Carthage to defeat Project Carthage?” Ulrich spoke in hushed tones.

“We have no political goals. We aren't going to hack into Andorra's intelligence operations, if it even has any. We're just looking for William, and we need to find him to prevent them from making a weapon out of him.” Aelita walked over and placed a bracing hand on Ulrich's shoulder. “If anything, using their own tools against them is poetic.”

“Well,” said Odd, standing up, “ability to rewind the time-space continuum aside, Ulrich was kind of right, we don't have the luxury of waiting forever. I think it's time we just bite the bullet and go for it.” He laughed as he walked towards the front door. “Who knows, we might find him in time to all go to dinner.”

–

The train ride to Boulogne had been eerily quiet, even on a crowded car. There had just been an aura of silence that radiated around the warriors. People had even moved away from sitting next to them. But that was nothing compared to when they came to the manhole in the park. At that point, the silence morphed from merely crushing to all-consuming. Almost deafening. The warriors turned to face each other. No one moved to open the cover. They stood at the rusted circle on the ground as if it were some kind of altar, silent and unmoving, for what seemed like an eternity.

Eventually, they all moved to open it at once. It moved much more easily under twenty-six year old arms than it had when they were twelve.

The climb down was shorter than it was before, but not by much. Some of them gasped – they had long since lost their immunity to the scent of the sewer air. The sound of the manhole cover grating shut above them gave many of them goosebumps. Still, no one spoke. The light in the sewers was dim, and yet, even before their eyes adjusted, their feet knew which way to go.

Leaning on the wall just next to them were three skateboards and two scooters. Untouched, except by time. They were dusty, and in some places rusted, but they were still there. Still waiting, after all this time.

“No way.” It was Ulrich who first broke the silence. He walked up to a skateboard and picked it up, looking it over. He spun a wheel with his finger. “Still works.”

“Do you even still remember how to ride that thing?” Yumi did not walk up to the skateboards. “I sure don't.”

“It's like riding a bike,” said Odd, quietly. “You never...” he trailed off as he picked up a board and looked at it just as Ulrich had.

“I can't believe they're still here, after all this time.” Jeremie was looking over his scooter, which unlike the steel of the skateboard axles, was aluminum and untouched by rust. It was, however, still the same size it had been when he last used it. Jeremie was two meters tall now, far beyond what could be reasonably considered as appropriate riding size. “I, uh, don't think it's going to quite work for me, though.”

“Perhaps it's best we just walk,” Aelita said softly. “It's not actually that far.”

The warriors marched on into the tunnels on foot, and the silence returned. The sounds of flowing water and footsteps echoed on the concrete, but somehow they only seemed to emphasize, even magnify, the silence. Aelita was right, it was not too long before they reached the ladder. Making the climb up and onto the bridge was just as reverent a process as it had been to come down, and when Aelita opened the cover to climb out, it felt for half a second like coming home. Of course, in a way, it was. She did own the place, after all.

“Why don't we all step into my parlor,” Aelita found herself saying aloud. She turned to face the group behind her, a grin slowly forming on her face. And just as slowly, grins formed on all their faces as well. Even Yumi, the last out of the sewers, could not contain a smile.

“Last one there's a rotten egg!” Odd shouted. There was no hesitation. Each and every warrior bolted after him, eyes wide and faces alight. Ulrich may have limped and they all might have lost their breaths much more easily than they might have before, but no one paid any attention as they slid down the ropes. Smiles had given way to raucous laughter. As they landed on the floor, with no grace whatsoever, the silence had been long forgotten.

It was Odd who reached the elevator first, clasping the button for support as his chest heaved in and out. Jeremie was just barely behind him, and Aelita and Yumi tied for third. Ulrich, still limping but with the widest grin out of all of them, grabbed Odd around the middle and threw him down to claim his place at the button. “You all cheated,” Ulrich said, rubbing his knee.

“That was still a pretty good performance for someone who says he doesn't run,” Odd said from the floor. “You know, Ulrich, this is a good angle for you.” The expression on Odd's face could only be described as “shit-eating.” Ulrich placed a foot over Odd's face with an expression that attempted to say 'shut up.' It was only half serious.

“So, uh… did someone remember the elevator code yet?” Yumi pointedly refused to look at the chaos unfolding among the boys standing next to her. Her voice was, however, more sardonic than it had been in perhaps the whole time the warriors had been reunited. It was almost nostalgic.

The silence returned, but only for a moment. “2-8-9-1,” said Jeremie, Aelita, and Odd together. The number had been completely lost to all of them until just now, as if the Universe itself made sure that no one – not even them – could return until it was time.

It was time.

Jeremie opened the door to the keypad and punched in the numbers. The crowd had parted for him; it had just felt appropriate for Jeremie, the leader, the first one to awaken the lab, to re-open it. A deep rumbling from the bowels of the Earth erupted below them, soon accompanied by a metallic screeching that in any other place might have been called hellish. Here, though, it was familiar. An old friend, coming to greet them. The elevator, in all its tarnished, brassy glory opened before them.

No one stepped forward at first. Odd got up from the floor, assisted by Ulrich, but neither of them looked at each other. They looked, as did everyone, at the elevator. The warriors stood in a line, side by side, staring forward. The preceding minutes had been a rush of energy and nostalgia, but suddenly it had been replaced by the kind of awe that filled your stomach, tensed your muscles, and rose into your throat so you could not speak. It was a trepidation, even a fear.

“We left all this behind,” Yumi whispered more to herself than anyone. “We said we would never come back.”

“There's nothing to be afraid of,” Jeremie said, ostensibly in reply to Yumi. The truth was that he, too, was speaking to himself. “There's nothing evil left here. Only the potential for the greatest good we have ever done.”

“We've saved the world here more times than we can count,” Aelita said. “We can do it again.” She stepped forward towards the elevator, then stopped and turned back to face her friends. “It's like riding a bike. You never forget.”

In unison, the warriors stepped forward. Aelita waited to meet them, and clasping hands by instinct, they stepped into the elevator together. Inside, the big button waited to be pushed. “For William,” Aelita said, and slammed her hand down. She held it for three long seconds, for the third floor. Slower than they used to, the doors closed and the elevator descended. The warriors remained with their hands held together. Time did not seem to move, only the subtle shaking of the elevator told them they were moving at all. It seemed much deeper than it had before, and cold air seeped in and settled on their bones. When the doors opened on the final floor, and the warriors could see their breath in front of them, they again remained motionless.

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” Jeremie let go and stepped into the room. “Once more.”

He did not need to see to find the switch on the wall. Staring forward, at the infernal eye emblazoned on the floor, he found the switch and flipped it. In a halo of mist, the doors opened and as if from the maw of Lucifer himself, the black and gold monolith that had defined his youth rose up before him. No one followed him as Jeremie walked forward, towards the machine. It was both decades old and the most powerful computer ever known to man. It was the past, and the future. It was everything he had hated, and everything he had loved. It was everything he had ever wanted, and everything he desperately wanted to leave behind.

But it was time. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, as Shakespeare had written. But the speech continued: or close the wall up with our English dead. There would be no dead. Jeremie intended to end this war before it began.

Finding the power was like finding an old friend. Throwing the switch made his heart beat quickly for a second or two, but he settled. He took a deep breath and turned back to the elevator. “Alright, Aelita, let's stop at the Scanners on the way up. I believe you have a homecoming, Princess.”

Chapter Text

PART II: ALL THAT WE LOVE
CHAPTER IV: AKIKO

The elevator doors opened to a pitch black room with a set of only slightly less black computer monitors. They were clearly on, but displaying an empty screen – it felt like a horror movie, as if something might come out of them and lunge for their throats. Jeremie, however, was not afraid. This was according to plan.

“Odd, take this and hook it up, do you remember how?” Jeremie slipped the old Gameboy – Odd's gameboy – out of his pocket and handed it to Odd without looking at him. He stared straight ahead, never taking his eyes away from the screen, even as he pulled his bag from his shoulder and pulled out his laptop.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Odd, as he knelt down at a cluster of cables and pulled one from the bunch. “Here's the one we used last time, I think.” He pushed his glasses up to the top of his head to get a closer look. “I just sort of… jam it in there, right?”

“Well, to be honest, I don't really know. I wasn't exactly present when you did it last time.” It might have been a joke, but Jeremie did not laugh. His voice was deadpan, and lower than usual. He was lost in several layers of thought. Sitting on his lap was his open laptop, a machine now frustratingly ancient. Jeremie tapped on several keys multiple times, as if that would make it faster. It did not.

“So, how does this work again?” Ulrich spoke quietly, as if he felt like he was disturbing something.

“The Supercomputer can't complete the boot-up sequence until it receives an authentication code. The code will be sent to my laptop, but must be entered by Odd's Gameboy. Are you ready, Odd?”

“Ready, Santa,” Odd said in a cheery tone. When everyone, including Jeremie, turned to stare at him, he blushed. Of course, no one could tell because the room was so dark, but he mumbled an apology anyway. “There's this… American Christmas movie...”

“Down, left, X, B, X, Select, A, X, Y, Y, Up, Select.” Jeremie read the code like he was reading a list of names of dead soldiers. Slowly, deliberately, loudly, and reverently.

“I was really hoping for the Konami code,” Odd muttered again. But he input the code as he was told, and in an instant, the lab sprang to life. Several of the Warriors had to shield their eyes from the sudden light of the Holosphere, but Jeremie did not. He walked up to the chair and sat in it as if he had just been there yesterday. On the screen, there was a simple loading bar.

“Aelita, the Supercomputer is initializing. Stand by.” Jeremie had to fumble with the headset to fit it to the size of his head, but he spoke clearly. The loading bar soon vanished, and the screen sprang to life. Without a moment's hesitation, his fingers found the keyboard and quickly started moving.

“Scanner, Aelita.”

It had taken Jeremie weeks, when they had first started coming to the Factory, to realize that major programs like activating the virtualization process or initiating a Return to the Past required both vocal and keyboard commands, as an extra layer of security – to prevent an accidental keystroke from, say, aborting a virtualization when a person's body was only half downloaded. Of course, Jeremie was such a good programmer that he had managed to find a way to do that anyway. It resulted in a certain dramatic flair in the process, to loudly and clearly announce each step in the process. Like something out of a television show. It had annoyed him for a time, to have to say it every single time. Of course, he had ended up doing it so much that he stopped really noticing. But now, as he said the words, it gave him goosebumps. It was like his first time, all over again.

“Transfer, Aelita.”

The keyboard commands were not a one-to-one translation of the verbal ones. The language the Supercomputer used was not French, not English, and not a programming language Jeremie had ever seen anywhere else. Most of the symbols on the screen weren't even Latin characters at all, even though the keyboard was a standard French AZERTY layout. For a layman to have to translate three ways at once – from the alphabet to the computer's unique script, from the keystrokes to the commands needed to initialize the process, and from the commands in text to the commands out loud – would almost be impossible. Not that Jeremie liked to brag – well, he did, but that wasn't a brag, it was the truth. Only three people on Earth had ever mastered it, and one of them was descended from another. Yumi had managed alright, the others… not so much. But the Supercomputer only had three true masters. And now, there were two. One of them was at the keyboard. One of them was about to enter the computer itself.

“Virtualization.”

Jeremie struck the enter key. It felt like home.

“Aelita, can you hear me?”

From a world away, a whisper came: “Loud and clear.”

–

Aelita landed on her hands and knees, and stayed there for a few moments. The entire world was spinning and she did not have the strength to look up. She knew that what she was looking at was a virtual construction, but her mind could not conceive of it as anything but real, and it made her head spin metaphorically as well as literally. Below her hands was a floor of polished blue glass, inlaid with curved stripes of white. Around her were walls of gray, not quite metal but not quite anything else either. The wall was made of adjacent columns, asymmetric, no significant section even, reaching up seemingly into infinity, or at least they did while she refused to look up.

“Aelita, can you hear me?” A voice came from thin air, at once from all around and just next to her ear.

“Loud and clear,” she said softly. Here she was.

Carthage.

After another moments hesitation, she stood up and, by instinct, brushed nonexistent dirt from her knees. She couldn't exactly feel the clear miniskirt as her hands brushed it, but she could tell that it was there and solid, and her brain seemed to fill in the blanks for her and told her it was vinyl. Not that she would ever wear it in real life, but she had always thought it was stylish for Lyoko. The pink and purple bodysuit was the same. Her legs were more slender than they were on Earth, she noted, and as she looked around, she realized she felt shorter. There were no mirrors on Lyoko, but she had a sneaking suspicion that if there was one, she would look into it and see a 12 year old girl. Her form had not changed. Never in her life had the realization that time had passed and she was no longer a child been so clear as this moment.

“Aelita, you haven't moved, is everything alright?” Jeremie spoke from nowhere again.

“Yes,” she said, louder than before. Forcing her feet to move, she stepped forward and the wall opened before her as the sea had split for Moses – but accompanied by a sharp chorus of metallic thundering. She walked forward along the narrow path and tried to calm her heartbeat. She was unsuccessful.

“As far as I know, you will still have to deactivate the switch, but obviously there aren't going to be any monsters to get in the way. It should be simple enough to do on your own, but let me know if you need assistance. Odd is standing by at the Scanners.”

“Acknowledged,” Aelita said. But when she stepped into the chamber, it was simply a vast, open space with the switch on the far wall, along a set of narrow steps. It was the easiest “challenge” she could remember. Perhaps XANA had increased security measures when they were there before, or perhaps Lyoko recognized its only living master. She mustered a quick jog and realized a moment later that she was pressing the button without really having paid attention to her journey at all. Her trip to the elevator was the same. Her feet slammed onto the floor without her realizing she had jumped.

It felt different to be in Carthage now, knowing that it was the remnants of everything her father had fought to destroy. Not just named after it, but its very essence, and its still beating heart. And as she mediated on the fact, her thoughts slipped to her father. He was gone now. XANA was gone now. There were no monsters. She was the only “living” thing in the entire world. It was an empty universe, hollow, with almost nothing to give it purpose or meaning anymore. Lyoko had once been an adventure. It had once been her home. But suddenly, Aelita felt scared and isolated and almost like she was drowning. She wanted this to be over with. She wanted to go back home.

Maybe if she asked, Jeremie would send Odd to her. But she wasn't sure she wanted to deal with Odd either. Surely even his sense of boundless energy would be quashed by the crushing emptiness of the place, and that would just make it worse to be here.

She did not feel any less constricted when she stepped out onto the terminal platform. It was like standing in outer space, with a deep blue “sky” miles away. She felt like she couldn't breathe, and like she was vulnerable to some attack that was lurking, but she tried to dispel the thoughts. There were no mantas anymore.

Just like there were no more wolves, right?

Her own thought made her jump, and for a moment she lost her balance and feared she might fall off the platform. But she righted herself and took a deep breath. “Jeremie, I'm here at the platform,” she said, as if Jeremie could not obviously see that on his screen. “You're about to lose terminal access.”

“Right,” Jeremie said. “Let me know what you find.”

She pressed her palm to the blue screen and her pulse immediately slowed. She could feel a sense of relief wash over her, perhaps just an old relic from the times when her palm on the screen meant the world was safe. Of course, in a way, it still did now.

Initializing Terminal…
Interface...loaded
Index...loaded
Archive...loaded
Automated systems...ERROR
Automated Natural Algorithm could not initialize. Location X:/ANA not valid. File not found.
User authenticated...Aelita
Administrator privileges granted.

Terminal online.

Welcome to Carthage.

“Administrator privileges granted.” Aelita stared at the words for a few minutes. They made something tingle in the bottom of her chest. The interface she was looking at was different from what she remembered. XANA must have prevented access to these systems while he was present, but as the bootup script noted, XANA was no longer present. Just like the Hermitage and the Factory, this world was hers now. Hers and hers alone. No longer a princess, Aelita was the queen. Queen of an empty dominion, full of nothing but memories and regrets. Twelve years ago, seeing this would have been like finding a gold mine. She never would have imagined there were systems like this underlying Lyoko. Before her in all its ASCII-designed glory was a genuine, 1980s style text-based interface that led to the most fundamental layers of the world her father had created. But looking at it just made her feel more sick.

“Jeremie, this is an entire interface I've never seen before,” she said. “It's… actually pretty archaic. I'm not familiar with these systems. It might take me a moment to make heads or tails of this.” Aelita stared blankly at the screen as she spoke. It asked her to type the name of the directory she wanted to search.

In the real world, Jeremie snorted in his seat. “Is there a wizard to help you?”

“As far as I can tell, XANA was the wizard.”

“Well… let's not re-install him.” Jeremie allowed himself a chuckle. “I think you'll be alright.”

“Yeah,” Aelita said. “Just give me a few minutes.”

Jeremie turned to face the rest of the gang, who were circled around the monitors and watching. “Aelita's in. She's looking for the right systems.”

“Good,” Ulrich said. “Do we know how long that will take?”

“No,” Jeremie said. “This isn't like anything else we've seen before. It was all programmed in the eighties. It might be a little while. Odd, you can come back up, I don't think we'll need you.” He spoke into the headset, but he swore that even a floor up and with layers of metal between them, Jeremie could hear Odd groan in disappointment.

The room was silent until the elevator doors opened and Odd walked back in, and then again after he rejoined them. Jeremie was slightly uncomfortable; the chair's height from the ground appeared to be unchangeable, and he was quite a bit taller than Franz Hopper had ever been. He had to slide down significantly so that his long legs could find a comfortable angle. But that made it harder to type, and made his back hurt. He was no spring chicken anymore, it would seem.

“Hey, has anyone told Elisabeth?” Odd piped up suddenly, causing Ulrich to jump.

“She's still at work, probably” Yumi said idly. “I think she said she had to work a double shift.”

“Yikes.” Ulrich did not look up as he spoke; his gaze was fixed on the floor in front of him. He was rubbing his bad knee, perhaps unconsciously.

“We'll bring her up to speed when she gets out, or perhaps even tomorrow. We probably won't need to stop her from getting rest, if she needs it.” Jeremie was silent for a moment. “Who knows. We might even have found William by then.”

No one responded. No one seemed to wanted to jinx the possibility.

“Oh hey,” Yumi said after a moment. “Here's Elisabeth now.” Her phone, which Yumi had pulled out of her pocket, was buzzing. “Hey, are you out of work?”

There was silence.

“What's going on?” Yumi's voice had risen several octaves. “What… what… she was fine this morning, she even-” Yumi stopped quickly in the middle of her sentence. When she spoke again, her voice was shaky, but her words were slow and deliberate. “Sissi, I can't… I can't understand you, you need to speak-” Yumi stopped again. “Alright. I'm on my way. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Alright. I'll see you.” She stood up and faced the elevator. “I need to go,” she said simply.

“Yumi, what happened?” Ulrich's voice was also slow and deliberate, and much shakier than Yumi's.

“My mother is dead.” Yumi was already halfway to the elevator.

In a mad scramble, Odd and Ulrich leapt up from the floor and Jeremie hurled himself from the chair. Yumi spun around on her foot and with a face furrowed in anger said “No” in a voice so sharp it made Ulrich flinch. “No,” she said again. “I don't… you don't…” She sucked in through her teeth. “I just… don't.” She turned again and slammed her hand on the button. “I don't… want… it needs to just be me.”

“Yumi...” Ulrich was whispering now. It was a pleading tone.

“No,” she said again without looking back. “This place kept me from my parents plenty enough when they were together and healthy. And now there aren't any more chances to make it up. I don't need to be reminded of all this now.” The elevator doors opened. “God, I've always hated this place. I hate it so fucking much.” She stepped inside and faced the assembled warriors as the doors began to close. “Besides, you have work to do.” The doors shut.

The room was silent.

Ulrich took a step towards the door, and then another, but Odd grabbed him around the middle to stop him. “Let her do what she needs to do.”

“She can't be alone. Not like this.” Ulrich struggled to get free from Odd's grasp, but somehow he could not break it.

“Odd is right,” Jeremie said softly. “Yumi has always… family has always meant more to Yumi, in a different way, than it did for any of us. Her family was always close by, and yet, the farthest away. She needs to deal with this in the way that works best for her. And Yumi is… accustomed to being alone, I think.”

There was a sharp thud as Ulrich fell to the ground, his legs splayed behind him as he landed on his knees. He fell again, to his hands, and made sharp, pained intakes of breath. His eyes were clenched tightly, and he looked away from Jeremie. Odd sat down next to him and kept an arm over him, rubbing his back softly. No one said a word. Jeremie turned back to the screen and idly tapped his fingers on whatever they could find. He slouched further and further into his chair until he had almost fallen out. He held himself there, staring at the ceiling, and spoke into the headset. “Aelita? How is it coming?”

“I'm getting there,” she said. “Obviously he hid the files on purpose, but I think I'm in the right directory.”

“Good,” Jeremie said. “Look… there's something that's happened that you should know about.”

–

Hospitals were not alien to Yumi. They were practically a second home. By now, she was able to navigate the halls without even thinking. The emergency room attendants all knew her name by now. She looked down as she walked past them, wondering if they knew. She did not want to talk to them. She did not want to talk to anyone. She even dreaded seeing Elisabeth.

The white tile floor had a sheen to it, as if it was freshly waxed. She could see part of her reflection in it – her black shoes and black jeans. But the reflection was warped and distorted, parts of her legs bent or curved and parts completely missing. She felt as if her whole body were bent just like that. With each step forward, there was a bigger hole inside her, filling up with fear and trepidation. For a moment, she almost wanted to turn around. For a moment, she feared she wouldn't be able to face it. But from down the hall, she could hear Elisabeth saying her name. She hadn't yelled, but it still reached her ears like a gunshot.

Elisabeth was wearing scrubs and her nametag - apparently still on duty, or having just gotten off. Next to her was some doctor Yumi did not recognize, a portly, balding man. His face told her he had no idea what to say. She hoped he didn't say anything at all. Yumi did not quicken her pace as she walked towards them. When Elisabeth stepped forward, she held out her hand, palm out. Elisabeth stopped.

Yumi stopped at the door frame, looking into the room. She could only see part of the bed, with her mothers legs under a white sheet.

“What happened?” Yumi did not face the doctor.

“She was found in her home, collapsed,” he said. “She was brought here in a catatonic state, with most of her body systems in a state of shut down. She was unresponsive to any treatment, and she passed very shortly after arrival. I am-”

“What caused this? Why were her systems shutting down?” Yumi spoke quickly over the doctor. She didn't want his platitudes.

“We… aren't sure. As your friend was telling me, she had been stable previously. I… can't imagine what-”

“Thank you,” Yumi said quickly. “That's all.” She stepped into the room, side-stepping the doctor and keeping her back to him.

Akiko Ishiyama could have been sleeping. There was no expression on her face. Somehow, Yumi could just tell that she was dead – she wasn't sure if it was the pallor of her mother's skin, or the unnatural position she was in, or something else. There were various sensors on her body, under her gown and on her neck and arms. Her hair was still in a bun, which meant that her mother had had the energy to put her hair up. For several weeks she hadn't even bothered because she was so weak all the time, but of late she had been doing it again. It had been a sign of progress. A glimmer of hope.

There were countless thoughts inside Yumi's mind that were all vying for attention. Regret, sadness, emptiness, confusion, anger, fear. There were so many that Yumi didn't know what she wanted or how to react. She thought of having to call her father and her brother, insurance companies, and funeral directors. She thought of waiting in more stuffy government offices trying to get records and certificates. She thought of days at the park, of the flowers in the closet, of shouting matches and giggling fits. She thought of the day Hiroki was born, looking down at her mother under blankets just like these, holding her brother with an exhausted smile on her face. She tried to remember the last words her mother had spoken to her – probably “I'll see you later.”

No. They were “have fun.” Yumi had dropped in to check up on her the previous afternoon, then said she was going to stay over with Elisabeth and her friends. “Have fun,” she had said.

It was Yumi who had said “I'll see you later.”

Here was later.

“Yumi, I'm so sorry,” Elisabeth whispered. “I'm so, so sorry.” She was standing behind her, but not touching her. “If you… whatever you need, you tell me, I'll do anything.”

“Just leave me be,” Yumi said finally. “I'll… text you.” Yumi sat gingerly at the end of the bed and placed her hand atop her mother's. It was not as cold as she had expected it to be.

“Okay,” Elisabeth whispered. “Okay.”

“Are you done with work? You could go to the Factory. Everyone else is there.” Yumi was looking at her mother's face now. She hated how plain and expressionless it was.

“Wait, what?” Elisabeth's voice was suddenly sharp. Yumi's head snapped up.

“Yeah, they think they can use the Supercomputer to find William. We found out from his dad where he might be,” Yumi said. There was an echo of confusion underlying her voice. Elisabeth almost seemed angry.

“What? When did this happen? Today? Why didn't anyone...” Elisabeth glanced down at the bed and then took a deep breath. “I'm… I'm sorry. I just… okay, I guess I'll go there.” She took another deep breath. “Is there anything you need before I go? Water, or anything?”

“No,” Yumi said simply. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Elisabeth said. “Call me for anything. Anything.”

“Yeah.” Yumi did not look up.

–

It was late in the night by the time Elisabeth had reached the Factory. She couldn't remember the path they had told her to take in the sewers, and she knew if she got lost down there, there would be no saving her. Instead she took trains and a taxi, and then eventually walked several blocks to reach the island. She had seen the Factory before, driving around town and such. In high school she remembered hearing about kids who said they had gone there to look around, but they never said anything interesting about the place. Just that it was empty. Eerily empty.

It was a long, squat, grungy building, peppered with graffiti and surrounded by sun-bleached, pale grey asphalt that perhaps had once been black, and even some grass, overgrown as it was. That Factory had never made anything for as long as Elisabeth could remember. She wondered why it was still standing. Of course, now she knew what the answer probably was. The secrets that lied under it.

Elisabeth walked along the bridge and then stared into the building. Giant doors were open – probably permanently, since it would have taken some kind of machine that was no longer present to move them back – and there was a giant gap, almost a cliff, between the bridge and the floor of the Factory. There were ropes that hung from the ceiling down to the floor. “Seriously?” She eyed the ropes suspiciously. How old were they? Were they ever replaced? She grabbed one and swore she heard snapping and fraying. The one next to it seemed more sturdy, but when she went to hang her weight from it, she felt too scared and let go. “This place doesn't have fucking stairs?”

After walking around, she did in fact find a door that led to the correct level, without needing to hang from ropes. It was a long walk though, perhaps why they never used it. And it was another long walk to find the elevator, which scared her at least twenty times more than the ropes had. The rumbling and metallic screeching sounded as if Satan himself was sending a cage to drag her down into Hell.

You deserve it, something from the back of her head told her.

It's for your father, she told whatever it was. Everything is to get my father back.

The doors slowly opened, and Elisabeth stared at it, afraid to step forward. It was not until the doors began to shut that she screeched and ran as fast as she could to get inside. There was another big red button inside – just one. No up or down. Not knowing anything else to do, she pressed it and waited. The screeching was even worse from inside, it made her cover her ears and ran up and down her spine. When the doors opened again, she ran out as fast as she had run in.

There were three people staring at her when she entered the room. It was a fairly dim room, clad in some kind of green metal, with giant clusters of wires everywhere. In the middle was a giant hologram, like something right out of Star Wars or something, and a setup of computer monitors. Jeremie sat at a chair in front of them, slouched down. Ulrich and Odd sat on the floor next to him. Ulrich was red faced. Odd looked tired.

She stepped forward and her feet clattered on the metal. She stumbled for a moment; there was little traction on the sheer metal tiles. Still, as ominous and imposing as the room was, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had been here before, in a dream or something.

“How is she?” Ulrich looked up at her and went to get up, but Odd grasped his hand and pulled him back down.

“She… she's a- well, she...” Elisabeth closed her mouth and thought for a moment. “She wanted to be alone,” she finally said.

Everyone in the room nodded.

“What happened? Do they know?” Odd spoke now, still holding Ulrich's hand. He was rubbing his thumb back and forth, though he didn't seem to notice he was doing it. He was staring up at Elisabeth, with a somber expression she had never seen from him before. It almost made her sick to her stomach.

“No,” Elisabeth said softly. “She was found collapsed in her kitchen. Her body systems just… shut down.”

“Her whole sickness has been such a mystery,” Jeremie said. “Yumi was saying that they just never seemed to know what was going on. Like it didn't match anything they'd seen before. I would hate… not to know.” He, too, was staring at Elisabeth. His gaze seemed almost piercing. She felt like he could see into her head. Suddenly tense, she turned away and looked wildly around the room on impulse.

“Where's Aelita?”

“In Lyoko,” Jeremie answered. “She's accessing old Project Carthage systems to find programs that we can use to monitor Internet traffic to find William.”

“Why are there Project Carthage systems in there? I thought Franz Hopper made this to stop them? And where is William? Yumi said that you had learned where he might be.” Elisabeth rubbed her temples.

“I… forget you aren't up to speed. All this happened while you were at work. I got in contact with William's father. He said William might be in Andorra. And there are Project Carthage systems inside the computer because-”

“Jeremie, I've got it.” Aelita's voice was exhausted but triumphant. “I'm going to initialize the program. I think… when I do it, it should free up the terminal, because that isn't the system that displays the information.”

“What… what is?”

“Lyoko itself,” Aelita responded. “Have you ever wondered why Sector 5 is surrounded with screens?”

Jeremie laughed. “Well no, because I've never seen it. But that makes sense. Elisabeth is here. I'm getting her up to speed.”

“I'm engaging now.”

The light in the room flickered as the monitors and the Holosphere faded in and out for several seconds. From the depths, there was a deep humming sound that seemed to fill the whole Factory. Every phone in the room beeped to inform its user that service had been lost. Suddenly, Ulrich clasped his knee. “Jesus! I can… feel it moving, as if something is… pulling it.”

Odd moaned and grabbed at his cheeks. “My fillings are squealing!”

“It's electromagnetic energy,” Jeremie said in awe. “The Supercomputer is… is reaching full potential. I bet you anything power is out in Boulogne right now.” Jeremie slowly got out of his chair, looking around. There was a giant grin on his face. “This is incredible.” Just as Aelita had predicted, his monitor returned to its normal display, and full control had returned. Very slowly, while still turning his head to look everywhere he could, Jeremie sat back down. His sense of awe was almost palpable.

“Jeremie… I can see everything. It's incredible. You… you wouldn't believe… The screens all come down when I reach for them, they answer to my thoughts... God, I can see why my father wrote a program to process this for him, it's just… so much, so fast. But it's glorious.” Aelita's voice was in just as much awe as Jeremie's was.

Everyone stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually, the humming subsided and Odd let go of his face with a sigh of relief. “Is it still working, Aelita?” Jeremie called out.

“Yes,” Aelita responded. “I've set up a filter script to only pull from Andorran IP addresses. Right now I'm searching for usernames that William was known to use, email addresses and Myspace and stuff. Even such a small country, it's still so much.”

“Don't… get overwhelmed, Aelita,” Jeremie said. “Be careful.”

Aelita laughed. “Said the pot to the kettle. Yes, dear.”

Jeremie did not respond, but his face did break into an involuntary smirk. “She's looking,” he reported. “The system is working.”

“What's it telling her?” Elisabeth leaned into the screens to see if she could read anything.

“Pretty much everything. Right now she's trying to filter it down. It's… not gonna be on there,” Jeremie said. “Only Aelita is going to be able to see it.”

“Is she saying anything? Can you make it so we can all hear her?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremie said, reaching over to unplug his headset.

“Aelita, can you hear me?” Elisabeth spoke loudly, almost shrilly. “It's Elisabeth. What are you seeing?”

“What am I not seeing? Right now I'm looking at instant messages, trying to see if – oh God, ew, I hope that's not him – any of these people are William. But there's Netflix accounts streaming and I think one of these is his Spotify… I'm just trying to… sort it all out.” Aelita's voice was strained. “I'm going to be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if this is what drove XANA insane.”

“Can you send us the information you have?” Elisabeth was leaning over Jeremie to speak into the monitors.

Jeremie, who was making a face at Elisabeth as she appeared to completely disregard him, tapped her on the shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“I just… if we all see it, maybe we can help her make sense of it.” She made a face at Jeremie, as if he were the one in her personal space.

“You're kinda... throwin' me off, Sissi,” Ulrich said. “You seem tense.”

“Well, am I wrong? What's better, one set of eyes or five?” Her tone of voice was one that Ulrich had not heard in many years. It made him scoot back, away from her. “And don't call me Sissi.”

The monitors suddenly shifted. Suddenly, they were full of live chat logs, videos, music, and emails flashing back and forth. The sound of three movies and two playlists all played at once, making it impossible to make anything out. Text ran along the bottom of everything, indicating IP addresses, web locations, even bit rate. “This is what I'm looking at,” Aelita said. Nothing stayed on the screen for longer than ten seconds, as Aelita flipped through what she could see. Elisabeth leaned in closer to the monitors, as if being closer would help her understand more.

“How will you know it's William?” Elisabeth's voice had gotten increasingly sharp as time had gone on.

“Well… I can make an educated guess,” Aelita said. Her voice was annoyed now. “I'm trying, I just need to concentrate.”

“Elisabeth, take a step back.” Jeremie's voice was sharp now, as well. “You're just going to get more confused leaning in that close.”

Slowly, Elisabeth pulled away from the monitors and stood next to Jeremie's chair, with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. “How long could this take?” Her voice was soft now.

“To be honest? Days. We might have to all take shifts.” Aelita was still audibly annoyed. “Would you like to be next, Sissi?”

“Elisabeth,” she muttered.

No one spoke after that. In fact, no one spoke for quite some time. Eventually Elisabeth grew less tense and uncrossed her arms. Even later, she quietly sat down on the floor. Her eyes never left the monitors. Eventually, the sound of snoring overlaid upon the sound of all the music and videos. Jeremie got out of the chair to walk around. He did several laps around the lab before sitting back down. Behind him, Odd and Ulrich were leaning on each other as they slept while sitting. It was not long before Jeremie himself fell asleep. Elisabeth remained.

“Aelita?” She had no idea how long it had been since they last had spoken. Perhaps hours. “Are you… doing alright? Everyone else is asleep. Do you need to sleep?”

“Not when I'm on Lyoko, not really,” Aelita said. “I'm used to it. I used to live here.” She was silent for a moment. “I'm not sure I've made any progress. It's all just… blending together.” After another, shorter silence, Aelita spoke again in a softer tone. “Has anyone gotten in touch with Yumi?”

“She hasn't texted me,” Elisabeth said. “She wanted to be alone, I… I'm not sure if I should...”

“We should probably leave her be,” Aelita said. “I'm sure she's gotten a hold of her family. Who knows, Hiroki could already be here. Or even her father. What time is it?”

“It's almost three in the morning,” Elisabeth said on her phone.

“On the 20^th, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Sometimes it's… hard to keep in touch with the concept of time when you're on Lyoko. Time has less meaning here. Or at least, the measurements of it do.” Aelita did sound fatigued.

“Maybe you should come back,” Elisabeth said. “Ulrich and Odd have been sleeping a while, they might be okay to do it if you were serious about the shifts. They're actually leaning on each other, it's… kind of adorable.”

“Let them sleep,” Aelita said. “Like I said, I'm fine. You should be more worried about yourself, haven't you been awake… almost 24 hours?”

“Twenty-two,” Elisabeth said. “I'm used to it. I just… don't want to miss anything.”

“It's… very touching, that you care so much. We weren't all that nice to you back at Kadic,” Aelita said.

“Well it's not like I was any better to you,” Elisabeth responded bluntly. “But William and I… connected, on a certain unique level. I was after Ulrich but couldn't have him. He was after Yumi and couldn't have her. It was all we could think about. We didn't talk regularly, but we… had that understanding.”

“Sissi, have you been awake this entire time?” Jeremie's voice was thick with grogginess. “I mean Elisabeth?”

“I was just telling Aelita, I'm used to it.” Immediately after, she yawned.

“Listen… I think you should go home,” Jeremie said. “You've obviously had a long day, and that was before… what happened. Don't you have work tomorrow? You can't just-”

“I have a night shift tomorrow. I'll be okay for a while longer. I can keep watch while you all sleep.” Elisabeth whispered, but her tone had regained some of its former sharpness.

“Well, alright,” Jeremie finally said. His lips were a thin line across his face. “But really, you have people who depend on you for their health, we all underst-”

“Oh, can it,” Elisabeth snapped.

Silence returned. Elisabeth pulled out her phone and stared at it absentmindedly for a while, then suddenly gasped. “Yumi just texted me,” she said.

Jeremie turned to face her. “What did she say?”

“She… wants to see you,” she said with a tone of surprise. “She… didn't say why. She's still at the hospital.”

“Why didn't she text… oh.” Jeremie had pulled out his phone, but the screen was dark. “It's dead. Um. Alright.” Hesitating for a moment, he got out of his seat and gently shook Ulrich. “Hey. Yumi asked to see me. I'm gonna head out. Can you keep an eye on things? Do you remember how to devirtualize someone?”

“Um… no?” Ulrich rubbed his eyes. “You, uh, hit the Enter key one or two times.”

“Well, Aelita can walk you through it. Aelita, did you hear that?”

“Yeah. Send her my love.”

“Yeah,” said Ulrich.

“Yeah,” said Jeremie. "I will." He turned and walked to the elevator, and was gone in a few moments without another word.

Ulrich gently moved Odd off of him and onto the floor. His snoring continued unabated. With a groan and popping joints, Ulrich stood up and walked over to the chair. “Sissi, have you been awake this entire time?”

Elisabeth did not look up from the text she was typing, nor did she seem to notice Ulrich had called her Sissi. “Yes,” she said. “And I'm just as fine as I was each of the other two times someone asked me.”

“Alright,” Ulrich said. “Aelita, how are you holding up?”

“Fine,” Aelita said. But actually, I think I'm going to turn on the terminal again, so your screen is going to go blank. Traffic has quieted down and I'm not seeing anything more promising than anything else, so I'm going to look at this information some more. There might be some more information about Project Carthage in here. Like who they are, for instance.”

Elisabeth's eyes shot up and she looked at the monitors just as they went blank. “Hey, I, just got a text from my boss. They… need me at work.”

“At 3 in the morning?” Ulrich's eyes were wide.

“I work at a hospital. I'm on call. That's how it is.” She stood up. “Who knows, I might catch up with Jeremie and Yumi. I'll let you guys know if I learn anything.”

“Take care of yourself, Elisabeth,” Ulrich said softly.

“You too,” she replied as she walked to the elevator. She was not even out of the elevator before she pulled out her phone. “That text I just sent you? It's urgent,” she said as she walked briskly across the Factory floor. “They might have information on who was with Project Carthage. And they're still looking for William, but either they can't make sense of it or they don't want to tell me. I think Jeremie is suspicious.” She paused. “Yes, I sent him to the hospital. He thinks Yumi asked for him, he'll probably go to the desk and ask for her.” She stopped in her tracks for a moment as the voice on the other end spoke. “No. She… she isn't going to be a threat. I mean, think of what just happened. She'll… be involved with family. It's just Jeremie I'm worried about. He's the brains of the operation.”

The line went dead, and Elisabeth stared at her phone for a while. She had no idea who she had just spoken with. They always used some weird voice modulator. But they were her father's boss, which made them her boss. She tried not to think about what she had just asked them to do, and she prayed that they would stay away from Yumi. Lord knew that they had done enough already.

She stepped outside and looked at the river in front of her. It was murky, she knew, but all she could see then was the glint of the moonlight atop it. She felt drawn to the glimmer, and walked up to the river bank. She could see her own face look back at her now, with dark circles under her eyes and hair splayed in several directions. There she was. A traitor.

Elisabeth bent over, grabbed her knees, and vomited into her reflection.

–

The hospital was eerie at night, even more than it was in the daytime. The lights felt even more sterile when they were the only light there was, and he felt sick even just being in the building. There was an oppressive hush in the building that made him feel like an intruder just walking through the doors. He worried that every step was a disturbance. He felt wrong.

There was a man reading a magazine at the information counter. He looked more tired than Jeremie felt, which was an accomplishment in and of itself. He looked up at Jeremie and said “Canihelpyou” in a single, groggy slur. He seemed unable to keep his head lifted.

“I'm, uh… looking for… um, Akiko Ishiyama.”

“Can you spell that for me?”

“A-k-i-k-o I-s-h-i-y-a-m-a,” Jeremie said.

“… One more time, please? Slower?”

Jeremie repeated himself, crossing his arms across his chest. They put this man in charge of life and death?

“Uh. Not getting anything, are you sure you spelled it correctly?” The man was already putting his head back down on the desk.

“Yes,” Jeremie said. “Look, she uh… she died today. I don't know, uh, how long they stay, but I'm looking for her daughter who's here somewhere, but my phone is dead so-”

“Wait, stop,” said the attendant, contorting his face as if he were in actual pain. “Look, if someone has died, they typically get moved to the hospital morgue. Your friend could be- hello, can I… help you?” The attendant suddenly pulled his head back up, and his expression seemed to be… confused. Perhaps fearful.

Jeremie turned to see two men, each just as tall as he was but three times his weight, in identical black suits and black sunglasses standing behind him. He knew immediately to run, but they knew immediately to grab him. They grabbed him so tightly by the arms he worried it was broken, but he was not worried for long. He could hear as they shot something at the attendant, probably a tranquilizer, and then they shot one at him. He had the strength of mind to begin shouting, but he could hear his own screams fade out just as the colors around him faded to black.

–

“Ulrich, are you there?” Aelita's voice sprang from nothingness and jolted Ulrich awake.

“Huh? What? Yes.” He fumbled for the headset and put it on, only to remember that it was no longer plugged in.

“Listen, I've found some information on people in Project Carthage,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “I don't recognize most of the names, but there's one… there's one you aren't going to believe.”

“Who is it?”

“Apparently, my father had a personal assistant during the project. Her name was Suzanne Hertz.”

END OF PART II

Chapter Text

INTERLUDE
JIMBO & SUZANNE

July 23^rd, 2018

It was a nondescript letter without a return address, addressed to “Jimbo.” He did not recognize the handwriting, but the fact that someone had actually taken the time to hand-write him a letter made him smile. The smile fell from his face as soon as he started to read it.

Akiko Ishiyama was dead. The letter was an invitation to a gathering at her home, which was described as “not a traditional funeral” but “a chance to come together and celebrate life.” It was short, and Jim had difficulty imagining Yumi speaking the words that she had written, as if she had forced them onto the page. Not that he blamed her, of course, but it hurt to imagine Yumi in such pain. She had always been such a strong girl. Strong young woman, Jim corrected himself.

The gathering was on Wednesday, which was the day after next. Jim had work of course, but he didn't think anyone would mind if he didn't go. It was only summer session, the classes were small and he had called off from work three times in his entire life, one of them being his own mother's funeral. The kids would enjoy respite from P.E. class, and it wasn't like he enjoyed his job anymore. Not even for the kids. It made him so sick to think about it, that the very young people he had dedicated his entire career to didn't motivate him anymore. But Jim was getting old, too old to genuinely participate in the lessons he taught and too weighted with somber thoughts and old baggage to be a positive force in anyone's life.

Even if he had refused to quit like the rest of the teachers, Jimbo Morales had left just as they did. It was only that his body remained, abandoned and left to go through its paces with a completely different person inside it. Jim looked again at the envelope, and at his name on it. He hadn't been Jimbo in a long time. Jimbo was dead.

He set the letter down on the coffee table and glanced at the rest of the mail that he had gotten. Pro Wrestling Quarterly had sent him a letter in a bright pink envelope. His unpaid subscription was probably going to be sent to collections. And some pizza joint had sent him a menu, but dairy gave him the shits nowadays and he had more difficulty hearing on the telephone than he cared to admit. All that rock and roll had caught up with him. He wouldn't be ordering any time soon.

Ten years ago, if Jim had said “all that rock and roll is catching up with me” in class, they all would have laughed, he thought to himself as he stared at the menu on the table. If it said it now, they all would have stared at him blankly. As he tried to recall the faces of his students, he realized he couldn't bring up names to all the faces. He had always struggled a bit with names, of course, but he had always known the names even if he couldn't always say them when it counted. But this was different. There were names he didn't think he knew at all, unless he was calling attendance and looking at the roster. Jim had become something he had sworn never to become. He was jaded.

With a sigh, Jim looked over to the calendar on the wall. For years, he had always secretly gotten the ones with cute animals on them, like kittens or ducks, as a way of sort of softening the edge of the passing of time. That and he liked kittens. But in March he had gotten sick of looking at the stupid little runts and had replaced it with the only calendar he could find, tossed in some neglected clearance section of the store – it was “large print” for “easy readability.” What a cosmic fucking joke that was. There wasn't anything on the 25^th, just like there wasn't anything on any other day. Even so, Jim could tell by the empty feeling in his heart that he would not be going to the “celebration of life.” He could not find it within himself to celebrate any life, and that wasn't what Yumi or her family needed.

“God, I hope they're doing okay,” Jim said to no one. “Whatever it is they're doing.”

Casting a grunt in the direction of the calendar, Jim walked the few steps it was to his recliner and flopped down. Empty soda cans fell from the armrests and as something crunched under his bottom he remembered he had been eating a bag of chips before he had gotten the mail. He considered pulling the bag out, but decided he didn't care. The chair was so old and lumpy, it wasn't any less comfortable to be sitting on the bag than to not. He did, however, take the time to fish the remote out from between his seat and the arm, because he was late to watch the news and that was all there was to do.

“-one hundred and twelve dead and nearly three thousand people displaced in unprecedentedly massive forest fires in the US state of Washington that have only grown in strength in recent days. A record drought continues to plague the usually rainy Northwestern United States; the White House this morning declared a state of emergency in both Washington and neighboring Oregon, sending Federal troops to help evacuate homes, but already several soldiers have died as fires continue to-”

Jim flipped the channel. There were other channels he could watch the news on.

“In international news, riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland turned violent this afternoon after the British Parliament in Westminster dissolved the Northern Ireland Assembly, claiming that the situation in Northern Ireland had grown too violent and unstable to support devolved government. With six dead and twenty wounded as nationalists attacked police outside the Assembly building, it is already the third deadly riot in the past seven days in Northern Ireland, in a city that is still reeling from a bombing that killed sixteen just last month. The situation in Northern Ireland has escalated since-”

Nope. Jim switched back to the first channel, hoping that it was late enough in the program that the only news left would be the stupid stories.

“-have just learned that an Air France flight from Moscow to Paris carrying 212 people has crashed over Belarus. Authorities have indicated that contact was lost with the aircraft for some thirty minutes before Belorussian authorities reported the crash. The aircraft crashed near a summer camp for children, and reports of casualties are-”

Jim threw the remote at the television but threw himself out of the chair and marched into his bedroom before witnessing whatever happened to the screen. He could still hear the reporter until he jumped onto his bed and threw the pillow over his head. The world was shit and he had had enough of-

What the fuck was he doing?

“What the fuck are you doing, Jim?” He spoke into his mattress, but even so there was an edge and a force to his voice. For even just a moment, it made him feel good to have such conviction, even if it was conviction against his own actions.

Slowly, he lessened his grip on the pillow and began to lift himself back up. The pillow slid from his head and landed somewhere on the floor. Joints popped as Jim forced himself up into a sitting position, facing his bedroom wall. Like in most places in his apartment, this wall bore various trinkets and tokens he had received during his many careers. At the moment, Jim faced an Award of Meritorious Service that he had earned during his time with the space administration. Next to it was a letter his mother had once written him, telling him how proud she was of him. In his closet, the doors of which no longer able to close because there were too many old clothes stuffed in it, he could just make out the sleeves of two of the uniforms he had once worn. And there, laying on the floor just next to his foot, was the old red jacket he used to wear to work.

“What have I turned into? When did I let it get this bad?” Jim leaned over and picked up the jacket. It had been on a clearance rack, Jim recalled, and it had made him feel sporty. It had eventually become something of a joke among students… and teachers, so he had retired it and it very well might have been here on this spot of floor ever since. How long had it been?

“Thirteen years,” Jim said aloud. He had been wearing this the year Odd Della Robbia and Aelita Stones had come to Kadic, but stopped the year after. Jim wasn't really good with numbers, but somehow the years got clearer when he could attach them to faces. And one didn't forget faces like theirs. He had been a teacher for many, many years. He had known thousands of students, and thought the world of each and every one of them. But there had been something special about Della Robbia and his group. Or, really, Belpois and his group.

It had amazed Jim, how someone like Jeremie Belpois could end up the leader of such a ragtag gang. There had been many people something like Jeremie Belpois who had passed through the gates of Kadic Academy, and most of them never made many friends at all. To be honest, all of them were the type he might have pegged as not being very social. Ishiyama was distant, blunt, and she didn't really care for the things that middle school girls were usually told to care about. Stern was the quiet, brooding, Batman-type. And awkward as hell, really. Belpois was the kind of know-it-all Jim himself might have roughed up a little in school. Della Robbia was… well, he was just out there. And people had always talked about Stones, hearing her screaming at night, talking about wolves… she was one of those kids who you could just tell had something go wrong in their home life. Kids could be cruel about that sort of thing. But they had all found each other, and they had really been something.

What would Yumi Ishiyama tell him, as he hid in his bedroom from all the bad news in the world? Maybe not anything. She probably would have just turned her back to him and left. Ulrich might have said something, urging him to get up because he couldn't just hide there forever. Odd probably would have been a little more optimistic, or maybe just commented that he had looked like a slug laying there on his bed. He couldn't quite imagine Jeremie saying anything, but Aelita would have walked over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder.

“You can do it, Jim, I know you've got it in you.” He had imagined Aelita saying the words, but Jim had said them out loud. He rose from the bed and turned to look out the window. They were out there, those kids. Grown men and women now, almost in their thirties. Saving the world.

Jim thought of William Dunbar. He hadn't even known he was missing. No one had. He had just fallen off the face of the Earth. What kind of teacher just let a student vanish? Hadn't his job always been to build upstanding young people and set them off into the world? Hadn't he always sworn never to leave a man behind? Those kids, those men and women, had dropped their entire lives to find their friend. They were willing to bear the weight of the world on their shoulders. And Jim was here, putting his head in the sand, making excuses. Too old. Too jaded. No. That wasn't how Jimbo Morales operated. Jimbo Morales got medals from the President.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The sun was bright and hot, and he could see people crowding into the shaded parts of the sidewalk as they walked around. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the thump of someone's bass. Maybe some of that electronic music. It was a different world from what it had been when he was Yumi Ishiyama's age. It was a scarier world. Never in a million years would he had ever guessed that people in his life would be disappearing like they had. He didn't have a clue what was going on, and nothing made a lick of sense, but at that moment, as he looked onto the horizon, Jimbo Morales decided that he was going to go out there and do something.

Somehow, he managed to find a duffel bag without having to dig through the closet for one. The jacket was the first thing he threw into it, as well as whatever clothing was in his reach. He had no idea how long he would be gone, but he knew he wouldn't be coming home for a while. He was going to go out there and… well, what was he going to do? He couldn't just run out there without a plan. That would be foolish, and not to be disparaging, but he was too old for that kind of brashness. He'd leave that to the kids.

The search for William himself was being handled by them, Jim presumed. He wouldn't be any help there, because he wouldn't even begin to know where to look. But there were other missing people he could help find. People just like him, lost, confused, cast away, and terrorized by forces beyond comprehension – the teachers. He could gather them all together, get them somewhere safe but united, so they could work together at a way to bring whoever these people were down. Maybe, if they put all their heads together, they could come up with something about William the kids hadn't. Or, hell, maybe they could all just cause enough of a stink to keep these Carthage people distracted while the kids did what they needed to do. That was something Jim was spectacular at doing.

He didn't have an inkling where William could be, but he had at least a few hints about some of his former colleagues. Well, just one really. Suzanne Hertz had called him some time ago, and she hadn't said much, but she had said that she was “taking the time to visit old stomping grounds.” And over 24 years of working together, he had managed to learn a few things about Suzanne. She had grown up in Alsace, near the German border. “On a good day, you could see Germany,” she had once said, “but if you could see Germany, it wasn't a good day.” Suzanne laughing had always lifted Jim's spirits. What a delightful, airy sound it had been, like-

Well, uh, anyway, Suzanne was from Alsace. Her husband, however – Mr. Hertz – had been from Germany, if Jim recalled correctly, but with a French mother. He had joined the French Army, and had been dating a classmate of Suzanne's, or something like that. And her friend had taken Suzanne with her to a military ball with Mr. Hertz in an attempt to find her a guy, only for her to get smitten with Mr. Hertz himself. “I don't think she ever forgave me,” Jim recalled Suzanne saying in a fit of laughter. And that ball had been in Strasbourg, which Jim remembered because he had an uncle who lived in Strasbourg. She and Mr. Hertz had gotten married in Strasbourg, and Jim recalled Suzanne off-handedly mentioning visiting there a few times, more than he could remember her mentioning anywhere else. If Suzanne Hertz had “old stomping grounds,” they would be there. Far enough from where she normally lived, but in a city plenty large enough to get lost in. She was a smart lady, she knew it was best to hide in plain sight.

And so it came to be that Jim found himself in his car, his old, junky car that was just as cramped and full of old clothes as his apartment. His duffel bag and a bag of potato chips were thrown into the passenger seat, and tucked in the back under a pile of old shirts was his trusty baseball bat, just in case things got rough. And in the trunk, Jim knew, was a nail gun in case things got rougher – he had always had a feeling that he could trust that nail gun with his life. Maybe he was being dramatic, but he knew to trust his gut. So he turned on the car and drove east.

November 11^th, 1989

“Waldo, what in the name of God are you doing?”

Waldo Schaeffer looked out from behind the mainframe to see his assistant standing in the door frame with her hands on her hips. Her brown hair, frizzy to begin with, seemed to be splayed in a million directions. Without her usual glasses, her eyes seemed more intense than usual – at the moment, they were bloodshot and wide open. It seemed that she had just gotten out of bed. Where did she sleep? In the damned lab?

He didn't actually want the answer to the question. He was afraid that it was yes.

“Jesus, Suzanne, what the hell are you doing here this late?”

She arched an eyebrow. She did not have to say the words I could ask you the same thing out loud because her expression said them for her.

“Suzanne, you need to leave. You're a smart girl. You know what's happening. You know what could happen to you if you get caught up in this. Get out of here.” Waldo hid the wire cutters from her line of sight, as if it might give her any plausible deniability if she didn't see what he was doing. But she had seen. He knew she did. Suzanne saw everything.

“I'm an intelligent woman, not ten years younger than you,” she said while crossing her arms. “And you, Dr. Schaeffer, are no spring chicken yourself. So unless you're planning to yank that thing from the wall yourself and intending to get shot to death while laying on the floor with a thrown-out back, move over and let me get in there.”

“Suzanne… don't throw your life away.”

“We're all about to throw our lives away unless we get fucking moving!” Anthea Schaeffer, Waldo's wife and fellow computer scientist on the project, burst into the room from the back door brandishing a hacksaw. “Stay or go, I don't care, but pick a side and stick with it. Keep snipping, Waldo.”

With violently clattering heeled footsteps, Suzanne went up to the mainframe and started yanking wires by hand. “I take it you aren't concerned with the integrity of the machine,” she said through grunts of exertion.

“Nope. We're just getting it the hell out of here.”

“Wait… you're removing it? I thought… you were just destroying the connections.” Suzanne did not stop yanking, but her voice lost quite a bit of its confidence.

“This thing isn't safe anywhere in this base,” Anthea said, squeezing behind her husband to reach the very back of the machine. “We've got to get it out of here.”

“This is a two meter tall mainframe,” Suzanne said. “It has to weigh at least-”

“Stay or go, but don't waste time complaining.” Anthea bent over to ensure all the power cables were unplugged, then lunged at the remaining cables with her saw.

“We are going to need another person,” Suzanne said.

“Who else is on base at this hour? Even the General goes home between two and four.” Waldo was sitting on the floor, trying to snip at the metal cable that secured the machine to the ground.

“Ferrand is probably still here somewhere. Or Gauthier. He might even still be awake.” Suzanne placed her hands on the Mainframe and pushed with all her might; several of the remaining cords that connected it to the dozens of peripherals in the room snapped out as it shifted.

“Ferrand is skinny as a twig and probably couldn't lift an IBM, and Gauthier is a toady and a creep,” Anthea said through gritted teeth. “What about Commandant Hertz, would he help us?”

“He… wouldn't want to get mixed up in this,” said Suzanne softly. “They're… they're already watching him so closely, he… well, at best, he would say no. At worst...” Suzanne did not finish her sentence.

“Well, we're about disconnected here, so we're gonna need to make a decision pretty quickly.” Anthea's teeth had not unclenched. “Either we trust your husband or we trust that creep Gauthier, or we lift this thing ourselves. We've already got a truck ready, we just need to get it down the hall.”

“That's… at least fifty meters… but maybe if we got Ferrand, he could at least-”

“Suzanne?” An even-toned, if a little fearful, voice called from the door. It was the Commandant himself, apparently with ringing ears. He had put on his uniform pants, but still wore his nightshirt. Commandant Hertz was the leader of the Personnel Division, which among other things made him responsible for the civilians on the Project. He wasn't a scientist, and didn't know much about computers, but he thought the world of his wife. As far as Waldo could tell, he was as honest as they came. Which was probably why the General hated him so much. “What are… what's going on?”

“Reiner, don't… don't get...” Suzanne tried to say something to stop him, but he was already walking in to join them.

“Christ, Suzanne, the Project's already falling apart anyway. Everyone knows Waldo and Anthea are leaving and they know they aren't going to let them. And everyone knows I'm doomed too, so let's just get the hell out while we still can. And if we can stick it to the bastards on the way out, well, let's do it. What are we doing, tearing this down?” Commandant Hertz briskly walked up to the Mainframe, rubbing his hands together.

“We're tearing it down and moving it out. There's a truck waiting at the south door,” Anthea said. “Or at least there was, who knows if they've moved it but we don't have time to guess. It's almost four and the General's never late.”

“I've got one last cable to cut,” said Waldo, crawling on his hands and knees over to the other side. “Who had all these goddamn anchors put in?”

“You did, dear,” Anthea said.

“Well, don't listen to me next time,” Waldo muttered.

“I try not to anyway,” Anthea said, winking at Suzanne.

“Done. How are we going to do this?”

“You and the Commandant are tallest. Pull it down from the top. Suzanne and I will lift from the bottom. Then just… just go as fast as you can down the hall. God have mercy on our souls.” Anthea took a deep breath and then crouched down at the bottom of the Mainframe. Suzanne copied her, and the Commandant and Waldo did as they were told.

“Son of a bitch,” Waldo said.

“Lift,” Anthea said, and she and Suzanne lifted as the men adjusted their grip. “Go, go, go!”

The hallway was the longest fifty meters of their lives. With the men walking backwards, they swore with every step, and Waldo stumbled twice. On the second, he rolled his ankle and shouted, but they carried on. With red, sweating faces and straining muscles, they carried on until they reached the promised truck, a green caravan with the cargo area already open.

“Turn and shove it up, boys!” Anthea shouted. They did as they were told, turning as best they could and moving the machine hand over hand into the truck. There was a hideous metallic scraping as they shoved it in, but they paid it no mind. It just made it more likely that no one could ever use that machine ever again, which was exactly what they wanted.

“Alright,” Anthea said. “Alright. We've done it. But we have to go.” She turned to the Hertzes. “We… already have our things in the truck, I don't...”

“Go,” Suzanne said. “There's still time before the General gets here and most of what we need is right here on base. Go.”

Waldo walked up to her. “Suzanne… you're one of the brightest people I've ever worked with. Take care of yourself.”

Suzanne grabbed Waldo by the wrists and held his gaze for just a moment. “Stay strong. Tell Aelita we all love her. Godspeed.”

“Waldo, we have to get Aelita before they know to look for us,” Anthea said, already in the driver's seat.

Nodding, Waldo turned and jogged to the door. Commandant Hertz slammed the truck shut and slammed on the door, and the Schaffers sped off.

The Hertzes stood and watched the truck speed down the road. “Did you get the tracer on him?” The Commandant asked.

“It's on his watch,” Suzanne replied.

“We'll let him run, for now,” the Commandant said softly. “Let him get settled and think he's safe. It's not like we don't have copies of all the programs and schematics. But when he's stopped looking over his shoulder, we'll get him back. Hell, who knows. He's always been an addictive son of a bitch. He might come back himself.”

October 10 ^th , 1994

Waldo Schaeffer never did stop looking over his shoulder. And when Reiner Hertz's grand plan of kidnapping Anthea to lure Waldo back didn't work, the General had had enough. Suzanne Hertz never did stop wearing her wedding ring, until the day she walked into Kadic Academy for her interview. They didn't need to know she had baggage, and Reiner had been dead for years by then anyway.

“Well, did you have any more questions for me?” The headmaster was smiling already, so she knew she had already gotten the job.

“Just one, but it's not necessarily about the job. I was curious about the person I'm replacing. I've… heard that he's...”

“Missing,” the headmaster said. “We… we started the year with a substitute, and it's hard for everyone to name a permanent replacement, but… it's for the kids. And the police… well, you know. They called off the search.”

“Was he a popular teacher?”

“He wasn't hated,” the headmaster said. “But he was kind of eccentric, I think it's fair to say. Not everyone understood where he was coming from all the time. Seemed awfully paranoid sometimes. And very old school in his teaching. Kids weren't crazy about all his homework. But he was a good man. Respected. We're all… going to miss him. It isn't going to be the same without Mr. Hopper.”

“No,” said Suzanne. “I can't imagine it ever will be.”

“Well, Ms. Hertz, I'm quite impressed with you. I'd like to offer you the job.” The Headmaster held out his hand, and she grasped it firmly, offering him a broad smile. She had gotten quite good at faking them.

“I'm pleased to accept. I'm very excited to be here,” she told him. “There's some big shoes to fill.”

“I'm sure you'll do great. Here, come with me, I'm going to introduce you to Jean-Pierre Delmas, he's my Deputy Headmaster, he'll get you started on all the paperwork and...”

Suzanne followed the Headmaster, but stopped listening to what he said. Instead, she looked around at the office, looking for doors and desks and computers and cabinets. Plenty of information to be rifled through. She could have Schaeffer's address by Wednesday. Who knew, he might have even left personal effects in his classroom that they stuffed somewhere “in case he came back.” Suzanne doubted they would ever find Schaeffer, to be honest. But she didn't really care about him personally. She cared about that damned Mainframe that they'd let just walk out the building. She had helped him tear it from the wall.

“We'll let him think he's safe,” she could hear Reiner telling her. God, what an absolute idiot he had been. And now he was dead and buried. And here she was, sent on some wild goddamn goose chase to find Waldo Schaeffer and what he left behind. The world was still full of threats, and if Waldo Schaeffer had died or fallen off the face of the Earth, he had taken with him the world's greatest hope to survive. What a crackpot idealist. Him and his wife. What a sob story she was.

She thought for a moment about the little girl. Aelita. She had gone with him, wherever he had gone. How old was she now? 12? For a moment, Suzanne felt guilty. But only a moment. She had given up guilt a long time ago. She was in the business of saving the world. Guilt wasn't an option.

All of a sudden, there was black haired man in front of her with the second-bushiest beard she had ever seen, after Waldo Schaeffer himself. He was going grey at the temples, and was fairly handsome in his sweater vest and blazer. Perhaps it was good she had kept her wedding ring off.

“Jean-Pierre Delmas,” he said, holding out his hand. Unfortunately, his did have a ring.

“Suzanne Hertz,” she said, shaking it with a genuine smile this time.

“It's good to meet you,” Delmas said. “I'm excited to work with you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Suzanne responded. “The pleasure is mine.”

July 23^rd, 2018

Five hundred kilometers was a damn long drive without air conditioning. The car's ever-so-kind thermometer informed him it was 36 degrees, which was downright hellish but yet still the lowest it had been all week. Even as the sun was setting in the sky behind him, the air was sticky to the point of being oppressive. For a guy with Spanish roots, Jim didn't do well in the heat. He cursed himself for not ponying up the money to fix the air conditioning in his car. “You only drive it to work and back, you're not going anywhere else any time soon,” Jim said aloud in a sarcastic tone, mocking his own words.

The last vestiges of rush hour were still on the roads, but of course traffic wasn't quite as bad in Strasbourg it was in Paris. Not quite as bad. There was still some punk riding his back bumper, he had been for at least two kilometers. Jim wondered for a moment if he was a tail, someone out to get him. It was an old, beat up van though, not anything he would ever picture the government chasing somebody with. Still, Jim swerved into the next lane and did not stop holding his breath until the other car sped ahead of him.

As he came onto the city center, it dawned on Jim that he actually had no idea where to begin looking. Strasbourg wasn't some small little hamlet. One thing Jim did know was that he was hungry, so he took the next exit he came upon and high-tailed it to the nearest McDonald's. A Royale with Cheese and a Diet Coke couldn't cure all his life's problems, but they could at least give him something else to think about for a little while. After he got his food he went to a table tucked away in a far corner, away from the windows. He couldn't help but think he was being watched. Even the baby staring at him from across the restaurant gave him the creeps. “I'm too old for this,” he muttered into his burger.

The respite offered by McDonald's was brief. He knew the greasy food would come back to bite him later, but even so it was gone far too soon. Walking through the restaurant to throw away his garbage made him tense, and out in the parking lot he felt exposed to the point that he could feel his heart pound. When he got back into his car, chest heaving, he shut his eyes and leaned back the chair as far as it could go. If he couldn't see the world, and it couldn't see him, maybe that would make things alright for a moment.

“You're not in your twenties anymore, Jimbo,” he said aloud to himself. “And whatever the fuck this is, it's a lot scarier than beavers in Quebec.” He paused. “Christ. It was just a McDonald's.”

Slowly, he pulled his seat back up. “Let's not be stupid. Alright. Where am I going to go now?” Half a million people lived in Strasbourg, how was he going to find just one? He didn't even know for certain that she was here. “If you can't find her, then maybe the best option is to bring her to you,” Jim said to himself. That was one thing he could do no matter how old he was – find a way to attract attention. But he hesitated – he wasn't the only person looking for her, was he? They could be anywhere. He wouldn't want to lead them right to her. “Well, Jim… if I was looking for some old teacher, where's the last place I would look?” What was an environment that he could not ever picture Suzanne Hertz existing in? It did not take him too long to think. “Some dive college bar,” he decided. They might certainly fit the definition of old stomping grounds, and even if he didn't find her, there would at least be beer.

As it turned out, there were several dozen bars near the University of Strasbourg, which was home to nearly 50,000 students – far, far too many of whom were out drinking on a Monday. Never had his age been more apparent then when he stood in line – a line – to get into a bar on a Monday night surrounded by kids half his age. Most of them paid him no attention, talking to their friends or staring at their phones. Probably playing Pokemon or something, the damn kids.

This bar was apparently called Charlot's, and it was the dingiest, most dimly lit place he could find. There was graffiti all over the building, which as far as Jim could tell, was supposed to be part of the charm. It was tucked back into an alley, hidden from the street behind a bunch of greasy take-out type restaurants. The smell of cheap beer lingered in the air, and he could hear the sounds of a football game being played loudly on a television inside. Occasionally, someone cheered.

The bouncers were younger than Jim, but just as big. They seemed to stare at him longer than at the other people in line, but Jim didn't pay them any attention. He could take them, he told himself. But he thought it best not to try. Not that he would need to, of course. It wasn't like he had a fake ID. In fact, they didn't even ask for one. For a moment, Jim considered cracking a joke about not getting carded, but he decided against it. At this stage of his game, it would just be awkward.

“Three euro.” There was someone sitting at a table set up at the inside of the door with a cash box.

“There's a cover? On a Monday? Lord have mercy,” Jim muttered to himself as he pulled out his wallet. What had this world come to? Three euro to sit in some dive bar on a damn Monday night. There had better at least be some goddamn decent beer. But considering that the only drinkware the bar appeared to own was cheap, clear plastic cups, chances appeared to be slim. Jim tossed the coins in the cashbox with a displeased grunt and made his way inside.

Like the outside, just about every inch of the inside of the building was painted with graffiti. The building seemed to be all concrete, so at least all the paint gave it some color. There was a projector and a screen showing a football game, though only a few people seemed to be watching. It was some minor league matchup, no one Jim knew or cared about. There were a few scattered tables that all seemed to be as old and as rickety as Jim was, and some booths on the walls that were, what a surprise, covered in graffiti. In the middle of the room was the bar, staffed by people hardly older than the students and practically the only place in the room with actual lighting. A quick look around told Jim three things: he was the oldest person in the building, he was the only person there alone, and there was no Suzanne Hertz to be found. But he had paid the three fucking euro, so the least he could do was get a drink.

It took the bartender what felt like several years to finally get to Jim. He had been standing at the bar for four minutes. “I'll have a beer. Big. Whatever's cheapest.” He didn't have that much cash on him, after the burger and then the cover. He braced himself for the worst, but the truth was that whatever it was, it wasn't the worst he'd had. The bartender was some kid with a sharply groomed beard who looked like he smoked dope. Of course, most kids looked like that these days. “Hey, lemme ask you something,” Jim told him.

The kid looked up at him. He seemed pretty stand-offish, as if he didn't really know how to approach Jim. Most people didn't. “I'm looking for someone. A woman, older… about my age, give or take. Big glasses, big gray hair… seen anyone like that?”

“Who you just described could be pretty much any professor on campus,” the kid answered, pouring shots of something that smelled like paint thinner as he spoke. “Can you be more specific?”

Jim had to give the kid credit, he wasn't lying. “Well, she would have probably been alone, pretty quiet… might have looked like she was hiding something. Probably looking around a lot.”

“I know exactly who you're talking about,” another bartender cut in. This one was a young woman, who looked like she could probably take down either or both of the big bouncers at the door. “There's this lady who I see everywhere on campus, or just around town. She's been in here a couple times, I've got friends who work at other bars who say they've seen her popping in and out. She just… walks around, always looking over her shoulder, always texting on her phone. Last week she came in, ordered a Manhattan, and nursed it all night while sitting in the back corner. Big, bushy gray hair and glasses like my grandma wouldn't even wear. She's been around for months, but no one has ever seen her in a class.”

“What other places have you seen her?”

“Everywhere,” she answered with wide eyes. “I never would have paid any attention to her, except that she's the only person to have ever ordered a Manhattan in the eight years I've worked here. But now that I noticed her, I see her all the time, and I realized that I had been seeing her all the time before. It's like playing Where's Wal-” She stopped in her tracks and then slightly, almost imperceptibly nodded. Slowly, with as much grace as his creaking joints and bloated frame could manage, Jim turned to face the door. And there, standing with her phone in her hands just like all the kids in the line, was Suzanne Hertz.

It had only been six months or so since Jim had last seen her, but she seemed to have aged quite a bit in that time. There was less volume to her hair, and more lines in her face. Perhaps it was just the dim light, but her skin seemed to have taken on a pallor. Still, she looked largely the same as she always had. Without her signature lab coat she seemed thinner, but even in “civilian” clothes Jim could feel her radiating sense of intelligence. She was the smartest person in the room, Jim knew it, she knew it, and probably everyone who stopped to look at her knew it. Her thumbs were flying atop her phone, and she barely stopped to hand over five euro for cover without even stopping to take her change. She did not look up as she walked to the back corner of the room and sat down in a booth as if she owned it.

Suddenly Jim felt his stomach tighten. “Get me a Manhattan,” he spoke to the bartender. But he did not take his eyes off of Suzanne. She didn't quite look like he had expected. She didn't look like a woman who was running scared. She looked like she was a woman with a plan.

The bartender set the drink next to Jim's elbow. Slamming down the rest of his cheap beer, Jim set the last of his cash on the table, not really bothering to count it, and picked up the Manhattan. It was an American cocktail made with bourbon and bitter as hell, if Jim could remember correctly. Of course, all the drinks he'd had in his life had begun to run together. If he had to guess, Jim would have pegged Suzanne for a clear liquor kind of gal. Something with gin, perhaps. A white lady, or even just a dry martini. But far be it from Jim to question a woman's drink choices. Either way, Suzanne obviously had elegant tastes. And there was far more to her than Jim had ever realized.

“I was wondering if you'd like a drink,” Jim said casually as he walked up to the table.

With a slight, almost barely noticeable, jump, Suzanne's face jerked up from her phone and looked up at Jim. For a moment, her jaw began to drop. But she stopped it and slowly stood up to face Jim. “How...” She looked down at the drink in his hand decided to grab it before finishing her sentence. “Seems like you've been playing detective.” There was humor in her voice. A devilish sense of enjoyment. But it seemed dark. Dark like the bar. Dark like the whiskey in the plastic cup Suzanne held. Dark like her eyes, which seemed to be much darker brown than Jim remembered. She took a sip, and a smile played at the corners of her lips.

“Oh, it wasn't much,” Jim said. “Just some asking around, and some remembering.”

“Sometimes it's easy to forget how long I've known you,” Suzanne said in an almost wistful tone of voice. “The years all run together. It really does seem like only yesterday...”

Jim felt himself blushing. “It's been a long, long time.” He sucked in through his teeth and tried to think of what he wanted to say, but found himself speaking without really thinking at all. “Suzanne… I've come here because I… I think we need to do something. I don't… I don't want to roll over on this anymore.”

Suzanne, who had been in the middle of another sip, stopped. “What do you mean?” Her voice was soft, but not delicate. Quite the opposite.

“I think… I mean, all this… business. You know what I mean. I can't help but feel like I'm running away from it. Giving up on it. And I don't want to give up anymore. I want to do something about it.” Jim spoke in hushed tones, as if he was afraid someone at the bar was a plant. He looked from side to side, trying to see if there were kids staring at him. There were not. In fact, Jim and Suzanne were the only people in that half of the room.

“Why don't we go somewhere a little more discrete,” Suzanne said. With a final sip of her drink, she stepped away towards the door, with her fingers grazing along Jim's shoulders as she walked around him. It didn't really seem like she had meant to do it, but after that, Jim couldn't help but follow.

The line of students waiting to enter the bar had cleared out. The alley was empty, and the sun was hidden behind low clouds as it began to set. Suzanne's heels echoed with each step. She walked briskly, and Jim almost struggled to keep up. Around the corner was a parking ramp where Jim had parked his car; it seemed as if Suzanne was heading there. She did not stop walking until she reached the third floor, and by pure coincidence – though with her, perhaps not – stopped near Jim's car. “So tell me what you want to do, Jim,” Suzanne said. Her eyes were intently locked on his, but her gaze felt… welcoming.

“I want...” He took a deep breath. It was his heart that spoke. “I want to save the world.”

January 8^th, 2018

“Do you remember when we first met, Jean-Pierre?” She clasped a brace over his wrist. “On the day I got the job at Kadic?”

“Vaguely,” he said, looking down at his arm, which was now strapped to the chair. Suzanne walked over and secured the second one in kind.

“I thought you were so handsome, with the grey at your temples… I mean, of course, you're still a handsome fellow, but you're no Pablo.” She chuckled. “I'm sorry, I'm just trying to keep you calm. Medical procedures are stressful.”

“What, exactly, is happening again?”

“We are going to rebuild you. We have the technology.” She chuckled again. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm nervous too, I laugh when I'm nervous. But what we are doing is an augmentation procedure to improve your learning capacity, your comprehension ability, and the language and sensory processing sectors of your brain. And we're throwing in laser eye surgery too, but that will be later in a conventional surgical facility. We just figure, for what you'll be doing, you won't want to deal with glasses.”

“And how are you doing this?”

“Ironically, through theories postulated by the very man we're looking for.” Suzanne tried to restrain a laugh, but failed, as she calibrated an instrument near Jean-Pierre's chair.

“Mr. Hopper was a neuroscientist?”

“Schaeffer,” Suzanne reminded him. “And dear heavens, no. Well, actually I suppose in a manner of speaking you could say he was, but really he was a computer scientist. He did work with artificial intelligence. We're just adapting his techniques to biological intelligence.”

“I thought you said you couldn't find his work. Wasn't that the whole point of hiring me?”

“We have some of his notes that he left behind, and he was very thorough.” Suzanne sighed. “Alright. Ethics laws require me to inform you that this procedure is experimental and theoretical. It is, of course, your right to consent or not to consent to the procedure. But you only get to keep the job if you consent to the procedure.”

Jean-Pierre looked down at his wrists, strapped to the chair. “I suppose there's no going back now.”

“That's the spirit.” Suzanne offered a genuine smile, and patted him on the hand. “You must understand. What you're doing is for the greatest good of all. You're doing this for the safety of our country. For the security of the world. For peace.”

“I've already said yes. You don't need to give me a speech,” said Jean-Pierre, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.

“You're a man after my own heart,” Suzanne said. “But I wasn't just saying that to say it. This is what I care about. This is what keeps me going. Imagine what it would be like, not to have to send soldiers out to war. To just press a button and bring the terrorists to their knees. To be able to find every member these wide-spread, ever-shifting networks of extremists, in real time. To be able to disrupt the signals they use to set off their bombs. To be able to track their communications and find them before they even make the bombs. Waldo Schaeffer was a coward, who was afraid to make hard choices. But he made something that could practically erase terror from the face of the planet, and he squandered it. Well, we're going to find it, and we're going to remake it, and we're going to save the world.”

“I just have one question, Suzanne. Is this procedure going to hurt?”

Suzanne chuckled.

July 23^rd, 2018

“Is that what you think you're doing? Saving the world?” Suzanne had crossed her arms, and she was peering at Jim over the top of her glasses. It made Jim step back.

“Well… yeah, why wouldn't I? These are bad people, hunting us down, wanting to… do who knows what evil things.” Jim wrung his hands. Suddenly the attitude Suzanne was giving off didn't feel welcoming at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. She still looked the same, but it was if there was something radiating from under her skin, giving Jim the heebie-jeebies.

“You don't have any idea, do you? What Project Carthage is doing. The kids didn't even tell you.”

“They said… uh, well they mentioned… I mean, we all got those weird visits from people in suits, talking about reopening the missing person case, asking about computers… and you told us all about this Carthage thing and how you think it had been involved with our school. You were the one who figured out the kids knew about it,” Jim rambled. “Look, I know they're bad people. But we can do something. We can help the kids.”

“Well, let me tell you a little more about 'this Carthage thing,'” Suzanne said, stepping forward each time Jim stepped back. “It was a government project to intercept and disrupt Soviet communications during the Cold War. But it grew into something much bigger than that. It was about defending freedom. It was about keeping the whole world safe. It was about creating an automated system that could keep all of us protected from threats, before they happened, and let us as humans focus on the greater work of building a better world. No more militaries. No more soldiers. No more terrorists. A world without war.”

“When you… put it like that...” There were beads of sweat dripping down Jim's face.

“You're a sweet man, Jim. I like you. Don't ever think that I don't. But… you're an idiot. And I don't deal with idiots anymore, no matter how loveable they might be.” Suzanne took a deep breath. “You aren't ever going to understand what Project Carthage really means. You couldn't stop it if you tried. I couldn't help you stop it even if I wanted to. It's just too much.”

“Even if you-” Jim's eyes were wide. He had stepped all the way back to his car and hit it with a thud. He started flailing wildly for the door handle but couldn't seem to find it.

“Those damn kids aren't the ones saving the world. They're just following the footsteps of a crazy old man who let blind idealism get in the way of the bigger picture. They're afraid to make the hard choices. And you… you're far too stupid to even understand what the hard choices are.” Suzanne placed her hand atop the car door handle with a violent clatter. There was a ring on her finger that Jim had never noticed before. “I give you credit for coming all this way. I give you credit for finding me. And I think that, with the right people around you telling you what to do, you might even be a minor threat someday. But that isn't a compliment. For you, it's unfortunate. Because I can't have any threats. Not again.”

“Su- Suzanne, please, what's happened to you? Have you always… did… did any of this mean anything? Was any of it real? Were you really a teacher? Did you care about the kids?” Jim was frozen as he stared up at Suzanne, tears rolling down his face.

She did not look up from her purse as she rummaged through it. “Oh sure, I was a real teacher. I even enjoyed teaching, I wouldn't have done it all that time if I didn't. There was a time when I vowed to leave my old life behind and just be Mrs. Hertz, the science teacher. But then Aelita Schaeffer just popped into my classroom one day, handed to me on a silver platter, and all that came crashing down. And now I've spent 12 years trying all over again to bring back what could have been. And I'm not going to let anyone stop me this time. Remember this, Jim Morales. I am the one who is saving the world.”

The gun she pulled out of her purse was very small and white, and had a sort of sheen to it. It looked like it was made out of plastic. That was what caught Jim's attention as Suzanne pulled the trigger. He couldn't bring himself to look at her face.

Chapter Text

“God has given to man no sharper spur to victory than contempt of death.”

-Hannibal of Carthage

ECHOES OF ECHOES:
Finding William Dunbar

PART III: MAKE IT THROUGH
CHAPTER I: THE CHIPS ARE DOWN

“Mr. Belpois, do you know where you are?”

The young man looked around. It was a nondescript room, dimly lit, with no one in it but him. The walls might have been a shade of green, or that could have just been the light that the single fluorescent bulb cast out. There was a mirrored window in front of him, like something out of a crime show. A lanky, unkempt face – his own – looked back at him. He certainly had not been this unshaven the last time he saw his reflection, so he was either very far away or he had been asleep for a very long time. There was no door that he could see, and when he attempted to turn to see if there was one behind him, he discovered he was chained to the chair.

“No,” Jeremie admitted.

“Can you tell me what day it is?” The voice that he heard was not intimidating. It was a light voice, moderately high-pitched, with a hint of croaking tones underneath it. Likely a male, probably over fifty. The voice did not scare him, nor did the situation he found himself in, truthfully. It was actually rather interesting. “Mr. Belpois?”

“July 25^th, 2018,” Jeremie answered. It was a guess. It had been July 20^th the last he remembered, but the stubble on his jaw was at least five days' worth.

“You guessed,” the voice responded simply. “But you are correct.”

“Are you going to tell me the answer to your first question?” Jeremie asked.

“I am asking the questions, for now,” the voice responded. How predictable. “However, to answer some questions presumptively, no, you are not under arrest, and you are not being charged with a crime. You will be free to go as soon as you answer a few more questions for us.”

Jeremie's hands chafed at the restraints on his wrists. “Well I'm certainly not in a position to argue,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“Tell me everything you know about Project Carthage,” the voice said.

–

The ball hovered in the air a meter above her face.

She didn't even have to raise her hand this time. It was just by staring at it that she could make it stay suspended. It was a table tennis ball that she had found in the cushions of the couch, old and dented. Yumi had no idea when anyone in her family had ever played table tennis, but she couldn't really think about that or anything else she was concentrating. She liked it that way.

It had been five minutes, she thought. Somewhere around there. The ball hadn't moved an inch since then, like it was hanging from a string. The entire world consisted of the dented table tennis ball, with only the quietest sounds to remind her that there might have been anything else. Murmurs of distant conversations came from somewhere downstairs. Cars drove past her window with the hushed hissing of wet tires on asphalt. It had rained that day, the first time in weeks. It was the kind of rain that had made everything even muggier, that made people stop and turn back around after going outside, giving up then and there on whatever they were going to do. Even through the humidity, several old family friends had come to her house today. Yumi wished they hadn't.

“I'm so sorry, Yumi,” said the voice of someone or other in her head. So many people had said it that the words didn't even mean anything. “She's in a better place now” had been another common refrain, which felt like something you told a kid whose dog had died.

The ball fell and hit Yumi in the nose. As a reflex, Yumi flailed her arm and the ball flew as it moved, shooting into the wall and then falling into a pile of clothes at the other edge of the room. For a moment, Yumi toyed with lifting it again, but didn't feel like it anymore. Still, the ball shook even at the thought. She had already gotten so much stronger. It made her feel even sicker.

Yumi remained on her bed, staring at the ceiling, for God only knew how long. It might have been an hour, or five minutes. She didn't care, and she didn't really spend the time thinking about anything either. Just staring. The murmuring had almost stopped by the next time Yumi bothered to pay attention to it. There were still cars on the street, and it might have even started sprinkling again. And then, a much closer sound. A buzzing from near her head. It was her phone.

Her father had texted her. “Are you awake?” Yumi sighed, a long sigh through her nose, and picked up her phone to send a reply. But her thumbs didn't feel like moving, and she couldn't think of what she wanted to say. Eventually, she swung her legs around and got up, slowly making her way to join the remaining people downstairs.

Aelita, Elisabeth, her father, Hiroki, Odd, and Ulrich were all in the room. Everyone else must have left. Jim never showed up, it had seemed. It made her stomach sink a little to think about Jim, but then, he did have school to teach. Everyone looked up at Yumi when she came downstairs, but no one said anything. Aelita moved over on the couch to make room for her to sit. Wordlessly, Yumi took the seat offered and then stared at the floor.

“Miriam Ghozali stopped by while you were upstairs,” her father said softly. “Your mother's old coworker. Do you remember her?”

Yumi offered a hum that she intended to be affirmative. “I remember Miri,” she added after a moment's silence.

“She says hello.” Her father's voice was plain. He didn't seem to carry the same weight about him that Yumi or Hiroki did. But then, perhaps it was just a different weight. Her father wasn't really an emotional person, but then, neither was she. And she was obviously just barely holding it together. Still, she couldn't really get a reading on her father. But that was okay. It was enough to think of her own feelings, let alone those of anyone else.

“Dad and I were thinking about going out and getting something for dinner, maybe just pizza? Is that alright?” Hiroki's voice was so deep it was almost haunting. Yumi would never, ever get used to it.

“That's fine,” Yumi said. And then, she made herself look up. Hiroki had a strange look on his face. It was obviously hard for him to see her like this. It was probably why he wanted to go with dad. “That really good place next to the metro station is still open. You should go there.”

Hiroki offered a small smile. “Alright.” He and their father got up, but their gazes lingered on Yumi for as long as they could before they turned and left.

The door shut. After a beat, Yumi sighed. “Please, God, I hope they take a while.”

Odd let out the barest hint of a laugh. His voice creaked with fatigue. He and Ulrich had had the most recent shift “listening,” as they called the ordeal of going to Lyoko and using the Supercomputer to look for William. Odd and Ulrich always went together, saying something about two pairs of eyes, but their shifts had been no more fruitful than anyone's. Yumi was pretty sure they just liked to be together.

“How are… well, let me rephrase. Are you managing?” Aelita spoke softly and patted Yumi on the knee.

“Yeah,” Yumi responded. And she meant it. Today had just been hard.

“Listen, if you need us to leave, if you need to be alone, please-”

Yumi raised a hand to silence Aelita. “No,” she said. “I'm okay.” There was a long silence. It hardly seemed like anyone was breathing. “Hey,” Yumi said softly to Aelita. “Are you doing alright?”

Aelita looked confused for a moment. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah.” She smiled and patted Yumi's leg again. “I mean, I haven't really been worried, since I know that he wakes up today. And I mean, I guess I have a feeling that he's going to be okay, so I'm… just sort of keeping the faith.”

“Have you had any more dreams?” Elisabeth had not spoken the whole time until then. In fact, Yumi was pretty sure that was the first time she had spoken all day. She, like Odd, sounded tired. She had for almost a week.

“No,” said Aelita. “At least not… well, you know.” Aelita did not like to say what the dreams were. She, unlike Yumi, did not even have a morbid or passing interest in delving into whatever it was that had happened to her. She continued to insist that it wasn't possible, Yumi knew, even if she no longer did out loud.

“I'm beginning to think William isn't in Andorra anymore,” Ulrich said. “If we're giving status updates.” No one had spoken much about “the mission” since Friday. They had rotated shifts in Carthage, but other than shaking their heads no when coming out of the scanners, said nothing about what happened. Indeed, they had barely spoken at all. Yumi had been staying at her mother's house after her father and brother came home, and Elisabeth had always been staying at her own place, so with Jeremie missing the apartment had just been Aelita, Odd and Ulrich, largely keeping to their own rooms.

“That's very possible, but at this point we don't even know enough about what we don't know to make any kind of judgment,” Aelita said. “Even in one of the smallest countries in the world, it's still essentially impossible for human eyes to comb through all that data.”

“Are you… thinking about...” Yumi didn't want to finish the sentence.

“Programming something? To be honest, yes, I've considered it. But only marginally. And I wouldn't want to do anything without Jeremie here. Or without unanimous consent.” Aelita's voice had taken on a hollow tone.

“Do you have any idea where he might be?” Elisabeth, who was sitting on the floor, shifted to look up at Aelita. “Or have you tried calling him? Maybe he's already awake.”

“I tried a little while ago, straight to voicemail. I imagine his phone is dead. I doubt they were kind enough to keep it on a charger for him.” Aelita did not look down at Elisabeth. Instead, she kept her gaze focused on the far wall, although it was obvious she wasn't really looking at it, just staring through it.

“So we wait,” Ulrich said. Now even he, too, sounded tired and hollow.

It was not too long afterward that Yumi's father and brother arrived with the pizza. Or perhaps it had been hours. None of them could tell. Dinner came and went, and eventually Aelita stood up to bid Yumi goodbye. But her father spoke up. “Yumi, you should go with your friends. Get out of the house. Do something fun.”

Yumi looked at her father, and over to her brother. She thought for a moment about what Aelita had once said, about trying to keep Hiroki from coming, so that Carthage couldn't get to him. But he was here now. She didn't want to leave them alone. But she knew they couldn't bear to see her the way she was. So she grabbed Aelita's hand and they walked outside together.

“Maybe I'll take a listening shift,” Yumi said as they walked down the street. She and Aelita were several meters ahead of the rest of the group, with Odd and Ulrich next and Elisabeth even farther behind them.

“If you want to,” Aelita said. “Although it's pretty draining. I'm not sure any of us are in a proper state to do it right now.”

The sidewalks were empty except for the warriors. The drizzling rain and oppressive humidity had kept away everyone else. There were hardly even any cars on the road, unusual for a semi-major thoroughfare like the one Yumi lived on. It occurred to her briefly that, like Aelita, she now owned her house. Or at least she would once the paperwork was all processed. She would probably sell it. She would need the money.

“I'm going to need to get a job,” Yumi said suddenly. Aelita turned to look at her.

“Right now?” She offered a small chuckle. Yumi didn't return it, but she did squeeze Aelita's hand a little more tightly.

“Eventually,” she said. “Soon, probably. I was just… thinking...”

They were all silent for a long time. No one else joined them on the sidewalk until they had almost made it to the metro station. The underground tunnels provided a brief, cool respite from the weather, but the trip seemed short. No one spoke on the train, either.Odd and Ulrich even fell asleep, Odd leaning on Ulrich's shoulder, too exhausted even to snore.

“So what's the plan?” Elisabeth was the first to speak again, after they had all sat down in the living room.

“There isn't one, Sissi,” Ulrich mumbled with eyes half open. Odd had resumed leaning on him. Ulrich probably intended to sleep, but his knee had flared and he was rubbing it in a futile effort to ease the pain.

“So… what? This is it? Are we just giving up?”

No one spoke. Each and every one of them, Elisabeth included, knew the answer was no. But no one had the strength to speak up and say it. Instead, one by one, they all succumbed to their exhaustion and fell asleep.

–

Tell me everything you know about Project Carthage, the voice had said. How predictable. “I imagine I know quite a bit less than you do,” Jeremie found himself responding. In the mirror, he could see his eyebrow arch. He hadn't intended it to.

“That isn't what I asked,” the voice responded. He was not angry, or even impatient. In fact, he almost sounded amused. Almost.

“Project Carthage was a military program intended to intercept enemy communications,” he recited, almost by rote. “I'm not certain on the time scale. Or even, really, which enemy they meant. I presume the Russians, some time around the Cold War, but I'm not familiar with the specifics of the project itself. Only with… the remnants. I think you already know this.”

“How did you become familiar with Project Carthage?”

“Oh, I just sort of stumbled into it,” Jeremie said. He was almost successful in shrugging as he said it. “The same way any twelve year old becomes familiar with the discarded remnants of unconstitutional government projects. I was snooping around in places I shouldn't have been. I was interested in robotics and I figured the old abandoned factory would be a prime place to find components. I wasn't wrong. I just happened to find other things along with them.”

The voice was silent for a few moments. “Let me… ask something more specific,” he said. He was less amused now, perhaps bordering on impatient. “How did you know what what you found on Île Seguin was Project Carthage?”

Jeremie had to take a moment to compose his thoughts. It had been a while, after all. Fourteen years, in fact. “I found the diaries of Franz Hopper,” he finally replied. “He had built the-”

“How?” The voice was sharp now. No, not sharp. Just… eager. Excited, even. “How did you find them?” For the first time, Jeremie got the sense that the voice didn't know the answer to the question he asked. Jeremie was surprised.

“What happens if I don't answer that question?”

“Then you sit here and rot.” The voice was harsh now, an angry wheeze. He could hear the hot rush of the speaker's breath come across the speakers in a tinny echo.

“They were in a locker at a metro station. I don't remember which one,” Jeremie finally said. “Mr. Puck gave me the key.”

“Mr… who is Mr. Puck?”

“An elf,” Jeremie said plainly.

A sigh buzzed through the speakers. “I do not understand why you feel the need to be so coy,” the voice said. “I have been nothing but generous with you.”

“You… kept me unconscious for five days,” Jeremie said. “I don't even know how you rendered me unconscious. I don't really remember what I was doing before I was here, so probably drugs...” Jeremie stopped as a thought occurred to him. “I was at the hospital,” he said. “I was… at the desk… asking about Yumi's mother…” How had they even known to look for him there? Did they just presume that eventually one of them would visit the hospital? Had those goons just been waiting in the shadows all day? Why had he gone to the hospital? Yumi had asked for him, that's what had happened. Had they bugged their phones? But no one had texted Jeremie. They had texted…

Sissi.

Elisabeth Delmas. Daughter of Jean-Pierre Delmas, who very suddenly Jeremie remembered was behind the glass. The voice was older and fatigued, but he knew it was him. Aelita had told him. This was the dream she had told him about, except now it was actually happening. A burst of adrenaline spiked through his body and cast away the last vestiges of fogginess the tranquilizer had left him with. “Your daughter is a spy, isn't she? She's been working for you the whole time!” Jeremie tugged desperately at the restraints on his arms. They didn't budge, but his wrists were skinny and if he sweated enough he could probably squeeze through them.

“I… I don't...” The voice, Delmas, was obviously unsettled. His voice lost its edge. The power balance had suddenly shifted away from his favor, and his fear was evident.

“I know it's you, Mr. Delmas! I know Carthage has you! Why don't you come out here and talk to me face to face? I don't know what they told you about this but there's no way you know the real story.” Jeremie still struggled with his arms. It seemed like he felt some give, but he could have just been imagining it. His heart was hammering inside his chest, and he could hear his pulse in his ears.

A different voice spoke next. Much cooler, still very much in control. And feminine. “On the contrary, Jeremie, it is you who doesn't know the real story.”

–

Miles away, Aelita awoke with a start. The drumbeat of Jeremie's rapid pulse still pounded in her ears. Her chest heaved in and out as his had. She could feel the sweat on her wrists and on her face. And without really knowing she was doing it at first, she lunged out of the couch, across the room to the chair, and placed her hand around Elisabeth Delmas' neck. “You're a sneak!”

Elisabeth, and everyone else in the room, awoke with a start. Aelita hadn't meant to shout, but her heaving chest had forced the words out of her at top volume. Elisabeth flailed her arms but the sheer shock of the moment had rendered her unable to think – that and the lack of oxygen to her brain. Her face began to purple and her eyes rolled back into her head. Aelita did not let go. She watched her knuckles become white and she heard someone – herself, apparently – continue to shout that Elisabeth was a sneak. There was a thundering and someone grabbed Aelita and physically yanked her up and away from the girl under her. It was Ulrich, who fell as he pulled Aelita and both of them tumbled to the ground. Yumi and Odd, on the other hand, ran to pin down Sissi, who had bolted to the door and was fumbling with the lock.

The silence in the room, for several moments, was deafening. There were deep red welts on Elisabeth's neck, and even drips of blood. Aelita still held her fist clenched, and her chest was still heaving. Eventually Ulrich groaned in pain, and Elisabeth burst into tears. She might have been trying to speak as she sobbed, but it was impossible to make anything out. Just disgusting, wracking sobs.

“I dreamed… I dreamed I was Jeremie again, in the room, being questioned,” Aelita gasped. “And Jeremie realized that the only way they could have known to be at the hospital to capture him was if they had somehow seen Yumi's text to Sissi to come see her at the hospital.”

“Wait… I didn't text Sissi to tell Jeremie-” Yumi looked confused, but she was drowned out by Elisabeth sobbing even more loudly.

“You piece of fucking shit, you made it up! You sent him there! You called them!” Ulrich had rolled out from under Aelita and gotten to his feet. His own fists clenched, he walked slowly towards Elisabeth with shaking arms. “What absolute fucking garbage you are!”

“You… you don't...” Elisabeth's face was blotchy red and a mask of abject horror. Tears and drops of blood stained the collar of her shirt. “They… they...”

“After everything we fucking told you about what this means and what they're capable of, after everything we trusted you with… you've been a fucking double agent this whole fucking time! We should have known! Like father like daughter.” Ulrich's face was as enraged as Elisabeth's was scared. He, too, was red faced and crying. “I knew the day we met you were a fucking-”

“They took my father from me!” Elisabeth did not even sound like herself anymore. She was wailing, and hoarse from crying. “They took him from me! They turned him into some robot freak! They took his life's work and then they… they changed his brain… and now he's… he's…” Elisabeth became incoherent again, and for several long moments all anyone could hear was wailing. “I just wanted my dad back,” she finally said, quietly. “I just wanted my dad back.” Yumi and Odd lessened their grips slightly, and Elisabeth collapsed to the floor.

“What do you mean, they changed his brain?” Aelita spoke sharply, but quietly.

“They… they… I don't know what they did, but they gave him some operation so he could… I don't know, go through records more quickly. They made him try and go through everything they could find that might lead them to what happened to Waldo Schaeffer and the Carthage records.” She began to quiet, but her sentences were still punctuated by sniffles and the occasional sob. “They took his soul from him. They made him a robot.”

“And what did they tell you? That if you found William, they would restore him and let him go?”

Elisabeth nodded.

“What did you tell them?” Aelita stepped closer to Elisabeth. Her voice was still sharp. Sharper than she meant it to be, but she couldn't stop herself. She was livid. She could barely see, she was so angry.

“I told them about how you were looking for William across the city, that you knew what school he went to, that you had lots of cash and wouldn't be using banks, I told them that you were staying here in my cousin's apartment, that we had spoken with Jim and were going to reach out to William's father… I told them you had reactivated the Supercomputer and were using it to look in Andorra for William… and I told them that I sent Jeremie to the hospital.” Elisabeth did not look up. She stared down at the floor, with her hair obscuring her face.

At the mention of Andorra, Aelita sucked in air through her teeth and groaned. And at Jim's name, Odd's face jumped up. “You told them about Jim? Is that why he didn't show up today?” Unable to control himself, Odd kicked her.

“Ouch! I don't know! I don't know!” Elisabeth began to cry again. “I only said that we had spoken to him. I lied to him when he asked if anyone else had spoken with him, I didn't tell him that Mrs. Hertz had spoken to him. I don't… I don't want Jim to get involved in this any more than you do. He's... the only one I have left.”

“Okay, what do you know? Who is them?” Yumi spoke now. Unlike the others, her voice was still level.

“I… don't know. I just speak to my father usually. Sometimes over the phone, a voice. They use a voice changer, I can't tell who it is or even it's the same person each time. But I think it's always the same person. And I think it's only those two.”

“What are their plans?”

“You already know what their plans are. You've gotten everything right, as far as I can tell. What they want to do, primarily, is reclaim Project Carthage. But even though they know that you are Waldo Schaffer's daughter, the house is destroyed and they can't get into the Factory. I haven't told them how to get in the lab, because I don't know. But they know that they wouldn't be able to do anything with the computer anyway, because they don't know how to work Waldo Schaeffer's programming. So they're after William, because they know that something happened with him.”

“How? How do they know? That shouldn't be possible, unless they could get into the Supercomputer.” Aelita crouched down and pulled Elisabeth's face up to look into hers. “If you don't want us to go leave you in a ditch somewhere, you'd better start telling us the truth.”

“I am! I am!” Elisabeth struggled, unsuccessfully, to break free of Aelita's grasp. “I don't know, that's just what my father said! He just talked about XANA and William being captured like it was something he knew. I don't know how he found out.”

“It's because I told him.” A voice, distant, came from nowhere. Everyone turned until they realized it was coming from the door. Odd and Yumi dragged Elisabeth forward slightly, and there before them stood a scruffy and very tired Jeremie Belpois.

“Jeremie! Thank goodness,” Aelita ran – literally bounded over Elisabeth and ran – into the arms of her husband, who weakly but genuinely hugged her.

“They let me go,” he said, stroking Aelita's hair. “They were true to their word. They asked me questions and then let me go.”

“Where did they take you? Who was it?” Aelita spoke into Jeremie's chest, still squeezing tightly.

“Delmas, and someone else. A woman. I don't know, they blindfolded me and drove me. It was a while. I might have even been out of the country, I don't know.” He gently tugged Aelita away from him and smiled at her. “But as I was saying, he knows about XANA because I told him.”

“I… don't know what you mean.”

“When we were in Kadic. Sissi brought him to the Lab. I explained it to him, and then Returned to the Past. But he can remember.” Jeremie spoke very casually, but everyone else gasped. “For a very long time, I presumed that being present in the Supercomputer's system somehow insulated you from an effect of the Return to the Past that wipes memory. It turns out that's not really accurate. The Return to the Past itself doesn't cause you to forget what you experienced. The Supercomputer, while processing the Return, separately places a block on the memories of everyone except those listed in the Supercomputer. Apparently, some operation Delmas had lifted that block. He remembers having traveled through time all those times. He mentioned that it's aged him quite a bit, having to process all those new memories.” Jeremie stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and squeezed Yumi's shoulder as he walked forward.

“How long were you out there?” Odd asked.

“Not long.” Jeremie laughed.

“So they know about the Return to the Past,” Ulrich said. “And they know about Andorra. Did they mention anything else to you? What did they ask you about?”

“They – this mystery woman, really – went into this long diatribe about how Project Carthage had meant to create a safer world and how, with XANA, they could defeat terrorism before it happens without risking French lives, all kinds of philosophical crap about a world without danger, bla bla bla. They really believe that their goals are noble, and they aren't crazy. They're deadly smart. They asked me what I knew about Project Carthage and how I knew it was Project Carthage. I think they were just fishing for extra information, maybe hoping that they could find some extra notes or something of Franz Hopper's. They were even pretty frank with me about things. Delmas told me what had happened to him, talked about this operation they put him through so he could process information. Said that he had 'benefited' from Hopper's research. I guess they have some old notes of his, so I'm not sure why they wanted new ones. I just think they wanted to intimidate me, really. And they let me go, obviously, because they think we are going to find William before they do.” Jeremie spoke as he walked through the room, then collapsed onto the sofa and massaged his wrists, still talking. “Oh, and Elisabeth, the jig is up. They know we know you know them, so they've cut you off. Guess you're stuck with us.”

“Jeremie, you're being awfully… casual about all this,” Aelita said.

“Huh? Oh, sorry. I'm just excited because I know what we have to do.” He was smiling, which made him stand out among the tired and scared crowd like a sore thumb.

“What?” Aelita gingerly walked towards him, almost afraid. He really didn't seem like himself. Or, at least, not a self that Jeremie had been for a long time. And Aelita didn't like that self.

“When I realized that Delmas let me go because he thought we would have better luck finding William, it made me realize very clearly that we really both have the same goal – finding William. We each have resources, but we're hindered on our own. If we teamed up, we could find him much more quickly.”

“Team… up?” Aelita stepped backward, just slightly.

“Yeah,” Jeremie said. “With Jean-Pierre's robotic information parsing skills, which as far as I can tell are based on precursor theories to what built XANA, we could go through all that information Carthage can show us much more easily. So what we need to do is capture Jean-Pierre Delmas.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Ulrich, the opposite of Aelita, stepped forward with intrigue.

“That's the easiest part of all.” Jeremie dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. He threw them at Ulrich and nodded towards Elisabeth. “We're kidnapping his daughter.”

Chapter Text

PART III: MAKE IT THROUGH
CHAPTER II: COMMON INTEREST

“I wonder how Craig is doing.”

Ulrich jolted, almost imperceptibly, at Odd speaking so suddenly. He had been sleeping, Ulrich thought, and he himself had been centimeters from dozing off. Odd laid on the floor, just next to the sofa that Ulrich was laying on. They rotated nights on each.

“Who is Craig?” Ulrich stared at the shafts of light coming in through the blinds and onto the ceiling, as he had every night for what felt like ten years.

“My roommate,” Odd said. His voice was muffled; he was probably lying on his side and speaking into the floor. “I left in such a rush. I wonder if he thinks of me. He was kind of a weird guy.” There was a silence. “I miss him.”

Odd hadn’t spoken much of his time in the US. He had gone after he flunked out of that art school in Italy, he had made films, and he worked in an office supply store. And there had been a really rich old lady. That was about all that Ulrich knew. Odd had never spoken about Craig before.

“You could call him on your new phone,” Ulrich offered. “Carthage doesn’t know the number, and it’s not like we can’t afford international calling.”

Odd didn’t say anything. Presuming he had gone back to sleep, or at least that he wanted to go back to sleep, Ulrich turned onto his side and tried to do the same.

“I tried to call Pauline the other day. She didn’t pick up. Adele’s number was disconnected. I didn’t want to try calling anyone else.” Odd’s voice was even quieter now that Ulrich had turned away from him.

Ulrich wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t tried calling his parents either.

“Maybe she just didn’t recognize your number. And people get new phones all the time. I’m sure everything’s fine,” Ulrich eventually said.

“You’re a shitty liar, Ulrich,” Odd said. He was louder now.

“No,” Ulrich said, rolling further into the couch, “It’s just that we’re all really good at it.”

There was a hand on Ulrich’s shoulder. “Ulrich,” Odd said.

Ulrich turned over to look at his friend. A shaft of light illuminated half of Odd Della Robbia, splitting him into shadow and harsh, almost glowing white. He was shirtless, and his long hair had fallen into his face. He looked almost like some sort of vengeful spirit, reaching out and grabbing him. He was paler even than Jeremie, and thinner than Ulrich had ever known a person to be. His ribs were visible, worse even than some of the models Ulrich had worked with.

That seemed like years ago.

“I don’t think I can do this.” Odd’s hair was so long it covered his mouth, which only added to the image that Odd was some sort of haunted apparition. He whispered, which only made him sound harsh.

Unable to restrain the urge, Ulrich reached over and brushed the hair out of Odd’s face. “You’re already doing it. And we’re all in this together.”

It was not until Odd grabbed his hand that Ulrich realized he had left it resting on the side of Odd’s face. “We can’t really get these guys, can we? They’ve been ten steps ahead of us this whole time. We don’t even know how many of them there are, and when we find William, what do we do? Just… hide for the rest of our lives? I can’t do this! I can’t live like-”

“We only have the one option, Odd,” Ulrich said. Odd made a face like he had been punched in the gut. Ulrich intertwined his fingers with Odd’s, and then reached over with his other hand and tucked some more of Odd’s hair behind his ear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really… know what else to say. But it’s not like we can run away. We all already did, didn’t we?”

The men were silent for a long time. In slow motion, Odd’s face began to fall. His neutral expression became a frown, which became a grimace. His eyes slowly shut tight, and he had almost begun to make sounds that could have been sobs before Ulrich placed his free hand on Odd’s mouth and said “Come here.”

Odd’s face froze in time, but he moved forward and crawled on top of Ulrich anyway. Ulrich pulled the blanket out and then over the both of them, resting his hands on Odd’s back. Odd was bony, and Ulrich felt like he wasn’t quite sure where to leave his hands for any extended period of time, but Odd was not crying, and that was what Ulrich wanted.

Eventually, one of Ulrich’s hands found its way to the back of Odd’s head. He absentmindedly ran his fingers through Odd’s hair, which seemed to calm him. His breathing slowed. Odd’s face was sort of nestled into the crook of Ulrich’s neck, and his breath tickled slightly. But it was alright. It felt alright.

“We beat these assholes when we were like 14,” Ulrich whispered. “We can do it again.”

“But will we ever have real lives? Will our families ever be the same? Are they… are they even-”

“We will always have each other,” Ulrich said. “I can promise you that.”

–

When Jeremie walked into the living room the next morning, holding his morning cup of coffee, Odd was snoring on top of Ulrich, both of them shirtless and under a blanket.

“I don’t want to know,” Jeremie said aloud, before turning around and walking into the dining room.

“What?” Aelita looked up at him from the table, where she had her father’s diary open in front of her.

“Nothing,” Jeremie said. “Find anything good?”

“Well I think it’s all fascinating, but in terms of anything particularly useful… I’m not sure.”

“You should let me take a look at it,” Jeremie said. “I might be able to-”

“Jeremie...” Aelita said softly. “We’ve been over-”

“Do we really have time for this argument? There are things at stake bigger than just one or two people, and if there is something that-”

“It is precisely because the stakes are so high that we need to hold on to ourselves as people. If we lose ourselves in this, then what would any victory mean anyway?” Aelita did not look up at her husband but glared into the diary, her brows furrowed.

“I wish you would trust me,” Jeremie said softly.

“You’ve pulled that on me before, Jeremie, and you almost ended up dead in an American prison.” Aelita finally looked up from the diary and into the eyes of her husband. “I have no intention of losing you again.” She paused, and then shifted her eyes slightly to the left. “Good morning, Ulrich.” Jeremie, startled, turned around.

Ulrich Stern, still shirtless, stood in the doorway with the kind of smile plastered on his face that clearly said he wanted nothing more than to fall off the face of the planet. “Morning!” He said in forced cheeriness. “Good morning, everyone! Haha.”

“We’re all walking into awkward things this morning, I see,” Jeremie muttered. “Where’s Odd?”

Ulrich turned red in the face for more than just a moment. “Um. Bathroom. Look-”

“Hey Ulrich, take a couple steps to the right,” Aelita said suddenly.

“Wait, what?” Ulrich looked wildly around for a moment, but before his legs caught up with his brain to move, Odd Della Robbia jumped out at him from behind, perhaps intending to somehow sort of leapfrog Ulrich and Jeremie and into the kitchen. Instead, Ulrich crumpled under the weight and pulled both Odd and Jeremie, who Odd had grabbed a hold of, down with him.

“Hm,” Aelita said, staring down at all of them. “I thought that would work.”

“What do you mean?” Jeremie groaned from underneath the two shirtless men who had fallen on top of him.

“I dreamed all this last night,” Aelita said. “The conversation with you, and then Odd jumping in. I thought if I warned Ulrich… oh well.”

“I thought you were being awfully plain-spoken,” Jeremie said.

“Mhm. I’d said it all just before I woke up. This deja vu gets tiring.” She offered her hand to Jeremie and pulled him up from the floor. The two of them together pulled up Ulrich, and Odd jumped up back onto his feet without assistance. “You’re chipper this morning, Odd.”

“I guess I just woke up on the right side of the bed!”

Jeremie glared at Ulrich, who turned scarlet. “It’s not what you think,” Ulrich muttered.

“I choose not to think anything,” Jeremie responded in the same low tone. “Aelita, we can finish our conversation later.” He looked down at his watch, and then spoke again, more loudly. “Yumi said she would be here by 8, didn’t she?”

“Good Lord, Jeremie, it’s not even 8:15,” said Yumi from the apartment doorway. She was red in the face, as if she had been running, and she had with her a backpack and a rolling suitcase. “Forgive me, but carrying all this crap with me slows me down.”

“I thought we agreed to pack lightly,” Jeremie said with an arched brow.

“The backpack is my stuff. The suitcase is Elisabeth’s,” Yumi explained through heavy breaths. She paused. “But speaking of packing lightly, Ulrich, you know it’s probably okay if you bring at least one shirt.”

A wry smile broke out on Ulrich’s face as he turned to face Yumi. “Are you complaining?”

Yumi was so good at making it look like she was about to throw her backpack at Ulrich’s face that he actually ducked. Behind him, Odd was snickering like a maniac. Even Jeremie allowed himself a chuckle.

“Yumi does have somewhat of a point,” Aelita said. “Ulrich, Odd, are you packed? We want to get going soon. I’ll make a quick breakfast and then we should go.”

“Well it’s not like I brought much anyway, but I’ll go put on a shirt. But does Odd have to, too?”

“I’ll do everyone a favor and get one on, don’t want everyone getting jealous.” He made a show of flexing before heading back into the living room.

It was pretty obvious to everyone that Elisabeth’s cousin’s apartment was no longer a safe place to stay, if it ever even had been. Jeremie had done a thorough search of the place for bugs and hadn’t found any, but then, they probably didn’t need any, considering Elisabeth herself had been one. Still, they all decided it wasn’t wise to stick around anymore. Especially considering what the plan was.

Elisabeth Delmas had already been “kidnapped.” Which was to say, she was not free to leave the apartment, and had not in three days. Jeremie had taken her phone, and she did not know the passwords to get into any of the computers in the apartment. However, unlike most other kidnappings, Elisabeth had readily agreed to the terms, and had even suggested the changing of the computer passwords. Her house arrest, in reality, was self-imposed. It only looked like a kidnapping – which was all that was necessary for the plan to work. What Jean-Pierre didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Elisabeth did not know where they were about to go. Actually, only Jeremie and Aelita did. They had temporarily given up on using the Supercomputer, since their searches hadn’t really been fruitful anyway. Aelita had simply told everyone it was a “secure location,” and it would be there, wherever it was, that they would negotiate with Mr. Delmas for his cooperation in exchange for his daughter’s “freedom.” Once they had secured Mr. Delmas, they would return to Paris and resume their searching.

“By the way, everyone, I meant to say that I actually did get with a private investigator,” Jeremie said at the table. “I mainly had him look into the clergy angle, just on the off-chance William had really meant something by it.”

“Let me guess. Nothing,” Aelita said as she set a plate of rolls on the table. “I’m sorry everyone, we’re out of butter, but there’s some margarine left.”

Jeremie made a point of making a sour face towards the concept of margarine and muttering about the butter shortage before continuing. “Well, yes and no. No, he did not find William, but he did discover that William had enrolled in a seminary school. There’s a Catholic seminary in Grenoble, apparently William went there and studied for about a week, until they determined that William wasn’t actually Catholic. He had forged baptism and confirmation paperwork.”

Everyone around the table raised their eyebrows. “Well, that’s something,” Ulrich said.

“They actually let him stay and work at the local church, cleaning and such, but he didn’t stay long. It looks like arrived at the seminary in the middle of the summer of 2007, a few months after Yumi’s mother saw him, but only stayed through Toussaint. No one in the area knew anything about where he might have gone.”

“Well, that’s fascinating, if not helpful,” Yumi said, reaching for a roll.

“Oh, I’m not done yet,” Jeremie said. “You see, I gave the investigator a list of potential aliases William might have been using, which included about all the male names from Kadic that I could remember. And do you know who happens to work at the seminary in Grenoble now? Gilles Fumet.”

“The history teacher? No shit,” Odd said over a mouthful of food. He swallowed and then asked “Is he… a priest now?”

“He teaches philosophy, apparently. I imagine he has to have some kind of religious credential to teach there, but he could have had it the entire time. Kadic’s a secular school so we never would have known. But here’s the thing. That’s Mr. Fumet’s home parish, he lives there when he isn’t at Kadic and he’s a member of the church. I reached out to him last night. Apparently he spoke with William frequently that summer.” The entire table had stopped eating and was hanging on Jeremie’s every word.

“He said William seemed pretty troubled and stand-offish, but what he said was ‘in a different way than he had been at Kadic.’ Said he was jittery, almost paranoid, but he would chat after Sunday services. I guess William would watch Mass from the very back. Mr. Fumet said he seemed to really be serious about the religion thing, he started wearing a cross necklace and all. And William apparently let slip once that there was something ‘wrong’ with him, but wouldn’t elaborate. But, anyway, my whole point here is this. Apparently one day William tells Mr. Fumet that he can’t stay, that something bad has happened, that he needs to get away. And Mr. Fumet tells him that he knows of this really good sort of… rehab/retreat place. Like a... clinic you live at. And you know where it is?”

“Andorra,” said everyone in unison. But Jeremie was grinning widely.

“Yes, but no. Andorra isn’t just a country. It’s also the name of a small town in Aragon, in Spain, that contains almost nothing of importance except this one Catholic clinic. I called the place, pretended I was his dad, they said William wasn’t there. But we’ve been looking in the wrong place. We need to be looking in Spain.”

“So is that where we’re going?” Elisabeth spoke suddenly from the entrance to the kitchen, still in her pajamas, startling everyone at the table.

“You’ll find out where we’re going when we get there,” Jeremie said, still grinning. “Now get dressed and have some food, because we’re about to kidnap you.”

–

Wherever they were, it was hot. Even hotter than Paris had been. It was a drier heat, too.

And the place reeked.

“Where in God’s name are we?” Elisabeth called out, presuming someone was there. She couldn’t really tell, because she was blindfolded. She had been blindfolded for several hours, but most of them had been in the back of a car. They had taken a train from Paris to Le Mans, and Elisabeth had been allowed to see that part. But then Jeremie had rented a van under an alias and put her in the backseat in the blindfold. They had driven for hours and hours and hours, stopped somewhere, and then driven for hours more. It had to be night by now, but it was still hot. They had to have gone south. If Elisabeth had to guess, they were probably in Italy.

Although Italy didn’t normally smell this bad. As far as she knew, anyway. She had only been once, on holiday, with her mother. That had been years ago. She missed her mother terribly. She was probably worried.

Suddenly, Elisabeth wasn’t even really concerned with where she was. She just felt sick. She hadn’t thought about her mother almost at all through all this. Beyond worried, she might even be terrified. What if there was a missing persons report? God, Jeremie and all the others could actually end up in jail or something.

Elisabeth laughed to herself. That probably didn’t concern Jeremie, he had already been.

Behind her, Elisabeth heard a door open and shut.

“Ms. Delmas,” said a voice. “Do you know where you are?”

“No,” she snapped. The voice was very clearly Jeremie. “Didn’t you hear me just say that?”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“I don’t fucking know, the 28^th? The 29^th? I don’t know what time it is.” Why the hell was Jeremie asking her these things? He clearly knew she couldn’t-

And then she remembered that Jeremie said he was going to be recording a video to send her father. But her genuine confusion had probably been helpful. Maybe after all this was done, since her medical education was now presumably toast, she could be an actress.

“Why are you doing this, Jeremie? Why won’t you let me go?”

“I am asking the questions for now,” Jeremie said. “But you already know the answer. Because you’re a sneak, and a liar, and a traitor.”

Her feeling of sickness returned to her. Jeremie was supposed to be acting, but he sure didn’t sound like he was. She desperately wished she could see what his expression looked like.

Footsteps approached her, and then seemed to walk in a circle around her. He must have been recording how she was tied to the chair, hands and feet, and how the chair itself had been attached to the floor. She had heard a drill earlier. Not that she had tried to pry the chair off.

“Do you have anything you would like to say?” The footsteps stopped in front of her. She could feel that Jeremie was close. Instinctively, she turned her face away.

Elisabeth was silent for a while. Her stomach twisted itself into knots, and for a second she even worried she might actually be sick. Her face got hotter, and her eyes began to burn. “I’m sorry!” She eventually said. “I hate this! I feel sick! I just want all of this to be over! I miss mom! I’m worried sick about her! I’m worried sick about you, daddy! I miss you too! I want you back!”

She was genuinely crying now, not that one could probably tell through the blindfold. Her nose was beginning to run, though. “I want this to be over. Please help me.” Her whole body heaved with a sudden sob. “Please help me. Please help me.” Her voice faded into a whisper. “Please help me. Please help me. Please help me.” And then, all she could do was cry.

After a few moments, there was a hand on her shoulder. “That was good acting, Elisabeth,” Jeremie said.

“I’m not acting.” Elisabeth continued to hang her head and sob. “I hate this.”

“I do too,” Jeremie said. And after another few moments, he untied her blindfold.

The room they were in was completely empty, except for a pair of cheap floor lamps. The floor was wood, wood that was dull, scraped, and very clearly old. The walls might have been white once, but now they were just the dingy shade of yellowish that could only have come from decades of cigarette smoke. There was a window that had been literally boarded over, but Jeremie couldn’t have done that because she had only heard the drill used four times, one for each leg of the chair. Wherever they were, it had to have been like that before.

Despite the smoke-stained walls, that wasn’t really what the room smelled like. It smelled like… skunks. Skunks and sweat, with a layer underneath of something burnt. It smelled almost like the boy’s locker room at Kadic, if it was full of skunks burning popcorn in a microwave. “Jeremie, really, where the hell are we?”

“We decided it was best if you really didn’t know,” Jeremie said. He was behind her now, untying her hands. The rope had chafed her wrists, and she spent several moments rubbing them while Jeremie undid her feet. “Alright. We’ve got some food out in the other room.”

“I’m not hungry,” Elisabeth said. “I just want to sleep.”

“Alright,” Jeremie said. “I’ll get you a sleeping bag.”

She was too tired to protest. In fact, the wave of fatigue hit her so quickly, she had practically fallen asleep in the chair by the time Jeremie returned, not even two minutes later, with the sleeping bag. Elisabeth crawled into it without taking her clothes off and was asleep before Jeremie even turned the lights off.

They were in an apartment in Nice, near the campus where Hiroki went to school. The entire building was vacant and condemned, but apparently Hiroki and his friends went there all the time to smoke weed. Jeremie had paid off said friends in cash to stay away for a few days. Without hesitation, Hiroki had answered Yumi’s question of “do you know somewhere where we can get away for a few days and fall of the grid?” He had even given Yumi some of his weed. Yumi and Odd were partaking of it in the kitchen. Ulrich, Aelita, and Jeremie were huddled on the couch, on the other end of the room, trying to avoid the smoke. None of them had eaten anything, and none of them were talking much.

“God, this is just… awful. Just absolutely terrible,” Odd said to Yumi after a coughing fit. “The stuff in Europe is just so much worse than what you can get in the States.”

“Oh yeah? Come to Japan some time. This isn’t even half as bad as what you can get there.” Yumi, unlike Odd, was taking deep hits on the spliff she had rolled in expert fashion. They were both next to the kitchen window, trying their hardest to blow the smoke out. The window was only able to open a crack, but it was the only window that wasn’t boarded up. They sat on kitchen chairs that looked like they dated from the war, next to a range that had to date from before it.

“One time, a cellmate managed to smuggle in some weed,” Jeremie said idly, on the sofa. “It was stuffed into a cigarette. There was still tobacco in the cigarette, so it smelled like both, and it was just absolutely awful.”

“I didn’t think you had cellmates,” Aelita said.

“The second time I didn’t, I was in solitary the whole time. But the first time, when I was just waiting for my court date, I was in a big cell with five other people. The guy who got the weed, he got caught pretty quick, he was gone the next morning. His name was Francois, I think he had stolen a bunch of credit cards or something. He got replaced with a guy who literally refused to speak to us, but the guards said his name was Yasinovic. He was a Russian, in for hacking, I think. I tried to strike up a conversation but he spat at me.”

“Nice guy,” Ulrich said.

“I punched him in the face,” Jeremie said, still in a casual tone.

Aelita blinked and shook her head. “You what?”

“I was… really tense. I kinda snapped. I broke his nose, and I almost got a second hit in but someone else grabbed me. They put me in a solitary cell after that, but my court date was the next day anyway, and they didn’t really punish me too bad. People hit each other in jail all the time.” Jeremie looked at his phone. “I emailed him the video. I can’t imagine he didn’t look at it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t care,” Ulrich said. His gaze was fixed at the other end of the apartment, at Yumi and Odd. They were chatting in low voices, probably still about weed quality. He could barely hear them over Jeremie.

“I can’t imagine he doesn’t. And like I said, at the very least, he needs us to keep researching, because they aren’t getting anywhere without us. So even if he doesn’t care about Elisabeth...” Jeremie trailed off. He didn’t seem to feel like finishing the sentence.

“You can go over there, we don’t mind if you want to smoke,” Aelita said to Ulrich. “The smoke just bothers my eyes.”

“Hm? Oh. No. I don’t like to smoke.” Ulrich tore his gaze away.

“You’ve been staring down there the whole time,” she said.

“Well the whole damn place is empty, I guess I didn’t know where else to put my eyes,” Ulrich answered.

Aelita was quiet for a moment. She looked down at Yumi and Odd too, and apparently decided that they were engrossed in their own conversation, because she spoke again in a low voice and said “Do you still like her?”

Ulrich laughed. “Aelita, I swear, I was just...”

“You’re avoiding the question,” Aelita said gently.

“It was middle school, that was years ago, I...” Ulrich trailed off. “Yeah, I get it, still avoiding the question. Look-”

“Do you like Odd?” Jeremie’s voice was even quieter.

Ulrich felt like someone had just tased him. He tensed, and stammered for a few moments. “No! I mean I… what?” His voice was loud enough to make Yumi and Odd turn, and he felt his face burn. They turned back away shortly after, but Ulrich stood up, took a few steps towards the bedroom door, then turned around and sat back on the couch, apparently unsure of where he wanted to be.

“We have all always been closer than just regular friends,” Jeremie said, still hushed. “And I think the fact that we all ran away from each other just made our bonds even more permanent. Everything we have all ever done, has always been done with each other in mind. I know most people aren’t still friends with the people they knew in middle school when they’re past 25. But we aren’t most people.” Jeremie was silent for a moment, and then continued. “You know, Yumi has spent the past year caring for a dying mother preparing herself to be alone. Odd doesn’t know how to be alone at all, and he’s been alone for six years.”

“I’ve been alone too,” Ulrich felt himself saying.

“Go smoke with him. Or smoke with her. Whatever,” Jeremie said. “But I think it’s pretty clear-”

“Jeremie, I’m not… I’m not ready to address that,” Ulrich said. But he was standing up, and walking over to the kitchen.

Aelita, who had been sandwiched on the sofa between the two men, laid out on the sofa with her head in Jeremie’s lap. “You shouldn’t have pushed it,” Aelita chided him gently.

He set his hand on her head and rubbed his thumb along the side of her face. “Life is too short, Aelita.”

–

Ulrich woke up clammy and covered in sweat. At some point during the night, he had turned on his side and had smushed his sleeping bag up against the wall. After taking a moment to force himself to remember where he was, he unzipped his sleeping bag and walked back into the main room. He stepped over Odd and Yumi, each still sleeping, to do so.

They had gone to bed before Jeremie and Aelita had. In fact, he would not have been surprised to find out that Jeremie had never gone to sleep at all. No one was in the kitchen or the living room when he got out there. It was quiet as a grave; he couldn’t even hear people snoring. He, Odd, and Yumi had slept on the floor in one “bedroom” and Aelita, Jeremie, and Elisabeth in the other. Not that there were any beds in them. He still felt a little out of it, but he couldn’t tell if that was because of the weed or just because he was groggy. He was halfway through making a pot of coffee before he even realized he was doing it.

He decided he wanted to take a shower to wash the sweat off, but there was no hot water, so it was more of a rinse. And it was only after he had “rinsed” that he realized there were no towels in the bathroom. Dripping and naked, he sneaked back out as frantically as one could while still sneaking until he found a thin, moth-eaten towel in a kitchen cupboard. He threw it around his waist and ran in earnest back to the bathroom. “Gross gross gross gross gross,” he whispered to himself as he toweled off. The towel smelled funny, and now he smelled funny.

And on his way back into the kitchen, his mood lifted slightly by the smell of coffee, he slipped on a wet spot he had left and fell flat on his ass. It sounded like a cannon blast.

“Fuck,” he said, lying on his back. For a moment, as he stared up at the light on the ceiling, his mind’s eye traveled back to the stadium lights on the football pitch that day. But only for a moment. He remembered the coffee, and managed to pull himself up.

“What happened?” Jeremie, sans glasses or a shirt, had walked into the kitchen. He was rubbing his eyes.

“Sorry. I slipped and fell, watch your step,” Ulrich said. “I showered and then realized there were no towels.”

“Oh. Fuck. I hope Aelita thought to bring some, because I sure didn’t.”

“I did,” Elisabeth said. She was still wearing her clothes from yesterday. “Jeremie, have you heard anything from...”

“No,” he said. Both of them were slowly migrating towards the pot of coffee.

It was then Ulrich realized that there were no mugs. He threw open all the cabinets, to no avail. “Why… why do they have coffee but no mugs?”

“Oh, shit, this coffee was, like… here? I wouldn’t trust it anyway, who knows how old it is,” Jeremie said.

“Well… fuck.” Ulrich sat on one of the kitchen chairs and stared at the floor.

Elisabeth ducked away back into her room, and then emerged with a towel and a bathrobe. “I’m gonna...” She pointed at the bathroom.

“Careful, water’s freezing,” Ulrich said.

Some minutes later, there was an ear-splitting screech from the bathroom, and not too long after that, everyone but Odd was running out into the living room. There was a moment of confusion, but Elisabeth assuaged everyone by shouting again “This water is freezing!” There was a collective sigh.

“At least there’s coffee,” Yumi groaned.

“And no mugs,” Ulrich answered.

“Oh. Fuck.” Yumi said.

Ulrich sighed. It was a very long, very heavy sigh. “We aren’t cut out for this ‘being-on-the-run’ shit, are we?”

“No,” Aelita said. “No, we aren’t.”

Everyone was silent for what felt like hours. Elisabeth, shivering and teeth chattering, eventually came out in her bathrobe, but she didn’t say anything either. Everyone eventually slumped into a chair, or on the sofa. Jeremie sat on the kitchen floor with his back on the wall, checking his phone every few minutes, each time as if he had forgotten that he had already checked.

No one else showered, although at one point Aelita got up to splash water on her face. Yumi got up and for a moment, seemed as if she was considering drinking coffee straight from the carafe. No one went to stop her, but she decided against it and sat back down. Ulrich drummed idly on the kitchen table. It was uneven, and shook every time he touched it. And there was a thick layer of dust now on his hands. When he got up to wash it off, he noticed Odd standing in the door frame of the bedroom.

“Morning,” he said. It was the first word that had been spoken in at least thirty minutes, maybe an hour. A chorus of “good mornings” greeted him. Odd picked a spot on the floor near Jeremie and sat down, and seemed to pick up on the prevailing mood of silence.

“I guess we haven’t heard anything?” Odd was staring at the floor.

“No,” Jeremie said. He checked his phone again, apparently just in case, but put it back in his pocket just as quickly as he had brought it out.

“Maybe he doesn’t care,” Elisabeth said. “Maybe his humanity is already gone.”

“It’s only been one night,” Aelita said. “We aren’t going to give up that easily, are we?”

“Well, Christ, I don’t know what the hell else we’re going to do with ourselves here. There isn’t even a goddamn television,” Elisabeth said. “I don’t think we thought this through.”

“No, I just think this is going to be harder than we originally envisioned,” Jeremie said. “And it’s 2018, we can stream on our phones.”

Ulrich sighed. “Look… I’m gonna go for a walk. Is that cool? Or should I, like, presume that someone is out there ready to snipe me or something?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Aelita said. “We should probably stay inside.”

“I’m gonna die if I have to stay cooped up in here,” Ulrich said, standing up. And he was suddenly very sure of it. Suddenly, he desperately needed to get out.

“We’re… in hiding, Ulrich.” Aelita was speaking in a gentle tone, but her gaze was locked onto his and her face was etched in stone.

Ulrich pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed again, and then walked around in a tight circle, clearly anxious.

“There’s pepper spray and a knife in my bag,” Elisabeth said. “Take it. You’re big, you can fight someone off. We aren’t any good to anyone, let alone William, if we can’t think. Jog a couple times around the block to burn off some anxiety and then come back. And take someone with you.”

Aelita was silent, and then looked over to Jeremie, who nodded.

“I’ll go with you,” Odd said, standing up. Silently, Ulrich went into Elisabeth’s room to grab what she had suggested, and then rejoined Odd. The corner of Jeremie’s mouth upturned just slightly as they walked out the door.

Ulrich attempted to jog for a few steps as Elisabeth had recommended, but then changed his mind. He made a note of the street they were on, as he barely had an idea of where in the world he was. The apartment building was drab brown brick, just like every other building on the street.

“Did you mean all the things you said last night? After Yumi went to bed?” Odd’s voice was quiet.

“I, uh… well, I don’t remember what I said last night,” Ulrich said. “I don’t smoke very often. Or ever, actually.”

“You said that our friendship had always been closer than just regular friends,” Odd said.

Ulrich stopped walking, but continued to look straight ahead. “Yeah,” he said, after a long silence.

“I missed you,” Odd said. He was standing a pace or two behind Ulrich, and didn’t make an effort to stand any closer. Ulrich couldn’t see him in his peripheral vision, but the back of his neck tingled when he spoke, as if he were standing right behind him, breathing on him. He knew he wasn’t, but Ulrich couldn’t shake the feeling.

“I missed you too, Odd.” He started walking again. “I worried about you, when I heard you had moved.”

“I worried about you too, although I didn’t really know about all the stuff that had happened. I just got this feeling that you weren’t doing well.” Odd had quickened his pace. Ulrich could see him out of the corner of his eye now.

“Do you remember the other night, when you said that you didn’t think you could do this? I’m beginning to wonder myself.” Ulrich felt his pace slowing.

“And do you remember what you said? That we did it when we were 14 and we can do it again?” Odd was next to Ulrich now. His tone of voice was somewhat brighter. Somewhat.

“Yeah, but-” Ulrich stopped. Odd had grabbed his hand. They stopped walking again.

“Never start a sentence with ‘but,’ it gives voices to your excuses and holds you back. We need to be strong, Ulrich. We don’t… have a choice. Our families are in danger, the world is in danger, we don’t really have… the luxury of… fear.”

Ulrich turned to face Odd. “That was… eloquent,” he said.

“We’ve grown an awful lot since what we went through back then,” Odd continued, remembering words he had been told by someone who cared about him when his name was Oscar. “We’ve learned new things. We’re going to be better at this now than we were back then. But we have to face the music.” Odd stepped closer to Ulrich and grabbed his other hand. “We are… stronger than we think.”

“I missed you, Odd,” Ulrich said again, whispering.

“I missed you too.” Odd seemed to be standing on his tip-toes. Ulrich seemed to be leaning down.

The kiss was brief. Ulrich’s heart beat out his chest a few times, and he was sure he could feel Odd’s doing the same, but they separated quickly, and seemed to resume walking almost automatically. They walked around the block in silence, but it was not a heavy silence. It was a peaceful one. They walked around the block a second time, and their hands brushed up against each other a couple times. And when they approached the steps to the apartment, Ulrich’s hand found the small of Odd’s back. But when they walked back into the apartment, they separated again, and returned to sitting on opposite ends of the kitchen.

Throughout that day, everyone would eventually take the knife and the pepper spray and go for a walk. They did it in pairs, Jeremie with Aelita and Yumi with Elisabeth. The apartment remained silent for much of the day, everyone glued to watching something on their phones or, in Jeremie’s case, reading a book. It was after 11 that night, just when people were considering saying their good nights, when Jeremie got an email from Jean-Pierre Delmas.

“State your demands,” it said.

“Meet us at the factory at noon tomorrow. Alone,” Jeremie responded.

“Very well,” was the answer.

And then, suddenly, they were back on the road. Without taking all the detours, it was a nine hour drive from Nice to Paris. They slept as much as they could on the trip, and arrived at the factory a little past 8. It was the morning of Monday, July 30^th, and Jean-Pierre Delmas was already waiting for them when they arrived. But, as promised, he was alone.

He was wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants. It was the most informally dressed any of them save Elisabeth had ever seen him. He was pale, he was thinner than any of the Warriors had ever known him to be, his hair was snow white, and his gaze was piercing.

Jeremie, fatigue creaking in his voice, spoke first. “You’re early. This isn’t what we agreed to.”

“You have my daughter,” he said plainly.

“Do you even really care?” Elisabeth spoke more bitterly, and more loudly, than she had meant it to. Her vitriol echoed distantly off the concrete and steel.

Jean-Pierre did not answer her. He kept his gaze locked on Jeremie. “Tell me what you want.”

“She has a point. Do you care? I have no assurance that you here to act in good faith.”

“You have my daughter,” he repeated. “And you talk to me about good faith? I could call the police and have you all shot to death.” His hand lingered over his pocket. “That would end things rather quickly, wouldn’t it? Remember your place. Remember whose world this is.”

“And William Dunbar will die with us. We are the only hope you have, literally the only key you will ever be able to find, to unlock the remnants of Project Carthage.” Jeremie, scowling, stepped forward. “There was once… XANA and I, we made a deal. It was a… what’s the saying, a shotgun wedding. I didn’t exactly agree, but I didn’t have any choice. The Supercomputer’s battery was dying. Both XANA and Aelita needed the Supercomputer to live. So, albeit under duress, I assisted him in replacing it. Today, Mr. Delmas, I am XANA, and the thing we both need is William. And you are going to assist me in finding him. At the end of the day, we will both walk out of here with what we need to win, and then we go right back to fighting like hell.”

Jean-Pierre stared at Jeremie, his bushy eyebrows furrowed. “You need my eyes,” he said finally. “You can’t make sense of all your information.”

“You have always been a smart man,” Jeremie conceded. “So what is your answer?”

“Your proposal is to force me to look at all your information, so I can find the answer I seek? You bring me here and lay all your cards on the table, and think this gives you an advantage? Jeremie, surely you are smarter than this. I should know. You were my star pupil.” Jean-Pierre crossed his arms. And for a moment, just a moment, he resembled his old self.

“Yes,” Jeremie said. “Except when you find the answer, you will share it with us, and I expect you will allow us to leave here with a head start.”

“And why is that?” Jean-Pierre allowed himself a haughty laugh.

“Because – in case you have forgotten – I have your daughter.” Jeremie nodded in the direction of Ulrich and Yumi, who had been standing on either side of Elisabeth.

There had been a part of the plan that the Warriors had not discussed with Elisabeth. It was at that moment that this part sprang into action. Ulrich and Yumi quickly moved over to Elisabeth and grabbed her by each arm, and then proceeded quickly to the elevator. Elisabeth screeched, and began to try to flail, but Ulrich and Yumi were too strong for her.

“What are you doing? What is this? This wasn’t part of the plan!” Sissi was bellowing at the top of her lungs, and her dulcet tones and their echoes filled the factory and the ears of everyone in it. Mr. Delmas ran at them, but with Jeremie, Aelita, and Odd combined, they were able to stop him. In fact, he was almost frail. He gave little resistance, and he said nothing.

“We are taking her to Lyoko,” Jeremie said. “And you will go as well. And so long as you cooperate, she will return to Earth safe and sound. But remember whose world it is. Remember your place.”

“Very well,” he said.

The elevator had rumbled to a stop. Jeremie pressed the button again to recall it. When it returned, everyone walked into it in silence. Jeremie got off at the lab, and Aelita escorted her former principal to the Scanners.

Yumi and Ulrich were standing in front of one scanner, that had Sissi inside it. Jean-Pierre stepped into another as if he had been doing it for years. Aelita stepped into the remaining one. She looked over to Mr. Delmas, and for a moment, as the doors closed, it occurred to her how much he looked like her own father.