Code 11: SYNDROME
"What?" Aelita exclaimed.
"Xana... he redirected the devil arm and used it to delete the return to the past function off the supercomputer! There's no way to launch a return to the past now!" Jeremy said angrily, his hands shaking in both anger and the prolonged pain that caused by his injuries.
"This is my fault..." Zaber muttered.
"No it isn't. You had no idea he could do that." Aelita said.
"Ugh..." Jeremy just bowed his head and finally collapsed.
"Jeremy!" Aelita said as she grabbed him, but he was already unconscious.
About ten minutes later, Aeltia and Zaber walked back onto the school grounds and straight to the office, with Jeremy lifted up between them. Aelita left Jeremy with Zaber and ran into the office, emerging with both the principal and Jim behind her.
"What happened here?" The principal asked him.
"He got mugged sir. He called me about an hour ago, and I went out to find him. He was out cold when I found him. He needs to go to the hospital." Zaber lied. But it was convincing enough that Jim picked Jeremy up as the principal pulled out a phone and called an ambulance. Zaber and Aelita glanced at each other nervously, it seemed that they were believed; but the actual doctors could find something that might give away the secret. The ambulance arrived and Aeltia left with Jeremey, but the principal pulled Zaber aside.
"I need to talk to you about this." He said.
"OK." Zaber responded nervously.
"I need to hear all the details about what you know for the police report."
"Alright..." Zaber went into a description of the supposed events. He claimed that he had gotten a call from Jeremy, saying that he had been mugged and telling him where he was. He then said he got Aelita and went to the location, and that Jeremy with all the knife wounds and had passed out right after they found him. He would let Jeremy figure out the details when he woke up. The principal nodded, and dismissed him as he pulled on his jacket.
"I'm going to the hospital to check on Jeremy. Would you like a ride?" The principal asked him.
"Yes." He followed the principal out the door.
"Oh... and just a side note, I don't know when you got that tattoo, but exposed tattoos are against the school dress code. Beginning tomorrow, I expect it covered." He said as he gestured to Zaber's right arm.
"Yes sir." They did not speak as they got in the car and drove to the hospital.
Jeremy lie in a bed in the hospital room, hooked up to a monitoring machine. He was still unconscious, his glasses lie on a bedside table and bandages covered a good portion of his head. His vitals displayed on the screen of the monitor were steady and normal. Aelita paced the room nervously. The doctors said he would be fine, they had stitched him up and given him numbing drugs so he wouldn't feel any pain. But she was worried about what would happen now. What if someone found out that they lied about Jeremey getting mugged? Now that the return of the past function was gone, they were one Xana attack away from the secret being blown forever. Even worse, they were doomed if they got injured after this; this kind of excuse only works once. She stepped outside the front gate and tried to call the others to let them know what had happened, but she still got no answer from them. A car pulled off and the principal dropped Zaber off, and then went to park.
"How is he?" Zaber asked her.
"He'll be fine... but I'm worried about what happens next. We're in real trouble, aren't we?"
"Yep. I bet Xana's planning something right now to do us in. When I get back tonight, I'm going to go camp-out the factory for the weekend. Having a constant presence there is our best chance against Xana now." Zaber said.
"I've been trying to reach the others. Still can't reach them."
"Damn it... I'm going to have to make them set their phones to vibrate." He began to relay the story he had told the principle to make sure they matched up. Aelita would have to talk to him as soon as he woke up to make sure he told the same story as well. A doctor was in the room when Aelita, Zaber, and the principal returned to Jeremy's room.
"Do any of you know anything about what this is?" The doctor said, holding up the green mobile scanner that had been in Jeremy's possession when they had brought him in.
"That's his!" Both Zaber and Aelita said.
"It's a pager..." Aelita said.
"It's an MP3 player..." Zaber said.
"Er... we mean, it's both." The both said, realizing they had messed up.
"Hm..." The doctor said, examining it more closely. "It looks too simple for that." it was true, the device had only two buttons, plus a spin wheel that was decorative and did not actually move. The doctor nearly pressed the transfer button, but Zaber snatched it away from him.
"I don't think Jeremy would appreciate you messing with his... er... mobile." Zaber said, as he placed the device back on the table next to his glasses.
"Well... alright..." The doctor said as he returned to his clipboard and jotted down some figures off of the monitor. Aelita sat down in a chair next to Jeremy's bed, and the teacher and the two students made light conversation, but no one really seemed to want to make extended conversation. About an half-hour later, the principal stood up and put on his jacket.
"All right, I'll give you both a life back to the school now..."
"Sir... can I stay here? I'll be fine, really..."
"Well... I suppose. I'll call in the morning and check up on you. Come on Zaber." The principal and Zaber left the room, and Aelita just sat there, staring into space, waiting for Jeremy to wake up.
Zaber entered the boy's dorms and made his way to his room, but stopped when he saw a light on in Odd and Ulrich's room. He kicked open the door.
"Oh, hi Zaber. What's up?" Odd asked him.
"WHAT'S UP? WHAT'S UP? IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?" Zaber glared at him.
"Why? What's wrong?" Ulrich said, sounding worried because of Zaber's tone.
"Jeremy's in the hospital. Let's just say we had a Xana run in, and we couldn't get a hold of you because you didn't have the consideration to put your phones on VIBRATE!" Zaber yelled at him. "If that wasn't enough, we failed to stop Xana, and the return to the past program got deleted. In short, WE'RE SCREWED!" Zaber slammed his fist against the wall, leaving a small hole in the molding.
"Slow down, Zaber. Just tell us what happened." Ulrich responded. Zaber told them everything in excruciating detail.
"Aelita's with him at the hospital now. That's it. I'm going to the factory now. I don't know what I'll do when I get there, but at least we I can keep a close eye on Lyoko there. Get a hold of Yumi, and go check on them in the morning." Zaber closed the door before they could respond and took off to the factory. Odd and Ulrich looked down dejectedly, feeling incredibly guilty.
Zaber sat in front of the terminal in the factory, searching for something... maybe a copy of the return program, or something else to get them out of this, but he could not find it. He checked the readout of Lyoko every few minutes, but found no disturbances. He shut down the windows and buried his face in his hands. This was his fault. If he hadn't fired off the Devil Arm, Xana couldn't have used it to delete the return program. He then began to search through the data dump that Jeremey had gathered before Xana had attacked him. The data was mostly junk. Xana had removed all the useful files beforehand and destroyed them when he threw the disk into the celestial dome. He found only one thing of interest, all though he had no concept to it's meaning. It was a text document containing four words: "Xenocidal Adaptable Network AI". It seemed meaningless, but he saved the file anyway, perhaps Jeremy would know something. He opened the 3d modeling program and began to work on a new project.
Aelita had dozed off in the chair as Jeremy still lay there. But something was amiss. She was the one having nightmares now. She was in the white void, the same place Jeremey had found himself in during the Code Angel vision. She looked around and saw nothing but white everywhere.
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
"Yes." A male voice said behind her. She turned around and there was no one there.
"Who's there?" She asked. There was no answer. "Who's there?" She asked again. She heard a footstep behind her. She turned around again. Franz Hopper was standing there, his hands behind his back. His eyes were completely blocked out by his glasses, which were a bright white from the glare. "Father!" Aelita ran towards him, but he held out a hand to stop her.
"Aelita... I never meant for it to end this way. I'm sorry... but this is something I have to do." He said as he shoved her, and she fell backwards, finding herself in the familiar walls of a scanner that had appeared behind her.
"Father... what are you doing?" She said. Hopper pressed a button in his hand and the scanner door closed. Aelita pounded on the walls, and tried to pry open the door, but could not get a secure grip on the seam in the door. "Let me out!" She yelled out. The scanner activated, and a red light engulfed her. And then she woke up. She held her hand against her head, which was throbbing with a headache. She readjusted to her surroundings, and saw that Jeremy was still asleep. She searched around for something to do to keep her awake, she was not looking forward to a repeat dream. She began to sift through a pile of magazines in the corner, but could not keep her self distracted from their constantly worsening situation.
Zaber sat in front of the supercomputer the next morning, having dozed off around 4:00 AM. He snored lightly, a 3d model resembling Jeremy was present on one of the windows, he had been constructing a mod to Jeremy's structure to remove his injuries and scars using the scanner. A small beep emitted from the computer, but it was not enough to disturb Zaber. A activated tower window appeared, accompanied by it's usual melody of beeps, but after a few seconds, the window disappeared. This repeated several times, but with little effect on Zaber, and no apparent effect on the world.
Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi walked into Jeremy's room as soon as visiting hours began at 10. Jeremy was still asleep, although he was completely stable. Aelita looked at them, black circles under her eyes from lack of sleep.
"Oh... listen..." She started warily.
"Zaber filled us in." Ulrich said mellowly.
"We're sorry we were useless." Yumi said.
"How are you coping? It doesn't look like you got much sleep." Odd added.
"Oh... I just had a nightmare, I couldn't get to sleep after that. That's all..." Aelita responded as she glanced at Jeremy. "I wonder just how long he's going to sleep like this..."
"So...why did Jeremy even go to Lyoko?" Yumi asked.
"Apparently he was trying to get data out of Sector Five by himself... I don't understand why he didn't call us and wait for a full team to go for the data." Aeltia said.
"So... that just leaves the question of where we go from here." Ulrich said. "The return is gone. Devirtualizations can get us injured. Xana's about this close to killing us all." Ulrich held up his thumb and index finger with about two-inches of space between them. "I don't know... we may just have to shut the supercomputer down."
"But what about Aelita's win... weird illness." Yumi changed her sentence as a nurse walked into the room. The nurse came up to Jeremy and readied a needle, with more pain numbers, the old dose had begun to wear off. As she gave Jeremy the shot, his face quickly contorted and he sprung upward, wide awake.
"Wha... where?" Jermey said gibberishly, confused after his sudden regain of consciousness.
"You got mugged Einstein." Odd said quickly, and then began to flex his eyebrows to try and get Jeremy to understand to lie about it.
"Yeah. You were in pretty bad shape." Yumi said. "But you'll be OK now. You've been in the hospital for two weeks."
"TWO WEEKS?" Jeremy responded.
"I'm kidding. It's only been a night." She responded. After the nurse ran a few checks and left them alone again, they filled Jeremy in on the "mugging". About two hours later, the doctor came, and gave Jeremy clearance for discharge. The five of them made their way back to the school, discussing what to do.
"For one of the first times, I'm at a loss." Jeremy said. He had no honest clue what to do.
"Same here." Aeltia added. No one could come up with a plan.
"Well... maybe Zaber will find something." Odd said, as he dialed Zaber.
Meanwhile at the factory, Zaber was awakened by his phone. He picked up.
"Odd?"
"Hey Zaber. Einstein just got discharged from the hospital, he's fine. Did you find anything?"
"Not much. At least, not much that I can understand. Bring Jeremy to the factory, I figured out a way to use the scanner to heal his injuries, and there's some data I need his help to analyze."
"Alright." Odd hung up. "Looks like we're taking a detour." He said as they changed direction towards the factory. As they walked down the street, a police car pulled out of an alley way, blocking the sidewalk. Two officers stepped out of the car, standing in their path. Odd's cell phone rang. He picked up.
"Hello?" Odd said into his phone.
"Odd, I had dozed off before, but it seems that Xana's activated NUMEROUS towers. Get your butts over here and keep you guard up." Zaber said as he examined the display worriedly. "Where are you?"
"In trouble I think." Odd said. The officers, who they now realized were possessed by Xana, drew their pistols.
"Odd... Odd what's happen..." Zaber asked him, but his call was cut off by a shrill static. Odd then heard a familiar voice, the annoying, pre-recorded voice that plays when you dial an inactive number, but the message was out of the ordinary.
"The number you have reached; is trying to kill you." The voice said. Odd's phone began to beep.
"What the?" Odd said.
"Odd, get rid of it!" Ulrich said, grabbing the phone and chucking it at the possessed officers. The phone exploded, it's battery overloaded and detonated by a specter. The officers were caught in the blast and knocked down, and the five of them made a break for the factory.
"Is it just me, or did Xana somehow acquire a sick sense of humor?" Odd muttered.
"It wouldn't surprise me." Yumi replied, although the question was rhetorical. Behind them, a black specter crept out of the smoldering remains of Odd's phone. It took a shape, and became the black-armored figure that was Xana's Lyoko form. It and the two officers began to pursue them. As they neared the bridge, Zaber, in Lyoko form, met them.
"Deactivate the towers. I'll hold them here!" He shouted as they ran past him. He drew Cocystus and fired at them, creating a larger blast radius of ice than usual, creating a wall of ice, which the possessed began to scale. Jeremy sat down at the terminal as the others stepped into the scanner down below.
"Transfer: Aelita. Transfer: Odd. Transfer: Yumi."
"Jeremy, I'm going back up to help Zaber." Ulrich shouted as he transferred his character data from the supercomputer to his scanner.
"Alright. Scanner: Aelita. Scanner: Odd. Scanner: Yumi. Virtualization." Jeremy struck enter, and they appeared in the ice sector. "Listen closely Aelita, there are three towers. One of them is being used to possess the officers. Another is controlling the specter that Xana created. I don't know what the third one is for, but I doubt he's baking cookies with it. They're in the ice, desert, and forest sectors. Start with the officer tower, here in the ice sector." Jermey ordered them.
"Alright... but how are we going to hide this without a return to the past." Aelita said.
"I'm afraid we won't be able to. We may have to come out after this." Jeremy said dejectedly. All their efforts over the years may have been in vain. The three warriors rushed towards the tower on their vehicles, meeting surprisingly little monster resistance.
Topside, the officer's passed over the top of the ice wall, and Xana simply phased through it. The officer's stood on either side of Xana, taking no action. Xana, his face still hidden by his familiar mask, stared at Zaber, then cracked his knuckles. Zaber held Styx pointed at them, unsure who to aim for.
"Well... well... It seems you now have a dilemma..." Xana muttered as Ulrich leapt up onto the bridge, in full Lyoko form. "I have possessed here, two perfect innocents, who are now hell-bent on killing you. Without you return program, you're situation is quite precarious. Defend yourself, and they will die, and you will be wanted killers. Don't defend yourselves, and you will die. I am curious as to which route you will take... logic never was you humans strong suit." Xana snapped his fingers, and then backed away towards the wall as he crossed his arms. The officers drew their pistols.
"Alright Ulrich, I'll take the ugly one." Zaber muttered.
"Which one's the ugly one?" Ulrich asked as he drew his sword.
"I don't know, why don't you ask Odd?" Zaber said sarcastically. "But seriously... don't hold back. It's kill or be killed now." Zaber changed to a dark tone as he adjusted his sunglasses, and then bolted to the left, firing Styx at one of the officers. The other officer began to fire on Ulrich, who promptly began to reflect the bullets off his katana. Dozens of civilians were watching now from the sides of the bridge, and Xana simply stood back and watched, paying no mind to either the warriors or civilians.
Xana had sent only two monsters to defend the tower, a Rider and an Assassin, the two most formidable creatures he had created. After a few minutes struggle, they had eliminated the Rider, but their LP were low and the Assassin still had nearly 300.
"What do we do Jeremy?" Yumi called out to him.
"I don't know. The only time we've ever been able to kill one of those things is with the Devil Arm... I've got it! Aelita, use the environment! However many LP it has, it'll die when it drops into the digital sea!"
"You're right!" Aelita exclaimed. "Cover me!" The three of them jumped out from behind the ice formation, Aeltia held out her hand and concentrated as Yumi and Odd used their fans and shield to reflect the shots from the Assassin. Aeltia caused a hole to appear in the ice beneath the creature and it fell through, but managed to catch itself on the edges of the hole with it's claws. As it struggled to get back up, Odd ran forward and jumped on it's head. He bounced off and over to the other side, and the jolt was enough to cause the creature to fall through. The others ran around the hole towards the tower.
Topside, Zaber and Ulrich were bearing down on the officers. Zaber had taken a shot in the left leg, and Ulrich both a shot to right shoulder and arm, leaving it useless. But wielding his katana in his left hand, he slashed the pistol in half and held the katana's edge near the man's throat. Zaber shot managed to shoot the officer he was fighting in the hand, causing him to drop his pistol and collapse to his knees. He held the gun to the man's head. The two glanced at each other. They were still threats, fully capable of Xanafied acrobatic skills as well energy attacks. They had little choice.
"Forgive me..." Zaber muttered. But it was at that instant that Aelita managed to enter Code Lyoko into the tower, and the two men collapsed before Zaber and Ulrich were forced to kill them. A massive crowd had now gathered, but the wall of ice Zaber had made still blocked them from getting closer.
"Looks like your plan to make us murders failed Xana." Ulrich said, pointing his katana at Xana, who did not look at all displeased.
On Lyoko, the three had taken the way tour to forest sector, where the tour that was generating the specter of Xana was present. The three stepped out of the tower right into a second set of vehicles Jeremy had whipped up. They proceeded to the new tower, but found William blocking their way, still under complete possession.
"This isn't good Jeremy!" Yumi shouted to him. Their LP were already low from the first round of fights. Even if they got past William and took out this tower, what did Xana have waiting at the third tower?
"I've been working on a program recently... if you can devirtualize him now, I can probably free him from Xana and rematerialize his body!" Jeremy exclaimed. It had been his main project before Aelita's restructure, having worked on it for all of the last year, but he had completely forgotten about it, but he had found the last data fragment in the dump he had pulled from sector five the day before to complete it. "If you can beat him, we may stand a chance."
"That's easy for you to say Jeremy."
"I'll come to Lyoko and give you some help!" Jermey shouted as he stepped into the elevator after setting both the program to materialize William and a self-virutalization. All three of them launched ranged attacks against William, but all three of them were bounced off his massive black zweihander. He leapt forward with great speed and sliced at Odd, devirtualizing him. Aeltia managed to strike him in the back with an energy blast, but he kicked backwards and knocked her off the edge of the pathway, but she grasped the edge and used her wings to lift her back up. Yumi threw both her fans at a nearby tree, and then tried to use telekinesis to throw the sliced tree at William, but the attack was to slow, as Willaim shoved her with his shoulder while she was concentrating. He lifted his weapons overhead to slash down at her, but Aelita warped the landscape to form a stone block off of which his sword bounced. Using the opportunity caused by his recoil, she fired a pair of energy blasts, which his him, but did not drop his LP to 0. He slashed at Yumi again when she got up, and she was devirtualized. He turned to Aeltia, who fired more blasts at him, but he deflected them. He swung his sword overhead, ready to bring it down on Aelita.
"Phoenix rise!" Jeremy's bo-staff, now ablaze and with a sharpened tip, flew from behind William, pierced straight through the Xana mark on William's back, and then passed out the other side, whizzing over Aelita's head. The Xana marks in William's eyes faded into black dots, and then he devirtualized. Jeremy stood behind him, his whole body still outstretched from the javelin like throw. He ran forward and helped Aelita up, who greeted with a kiss. In the real world, the scanner burst open, and William fell forward, gasping for breath. Odd and Yumi stood ready, in case he was still possessed.
"Oh... hi guys. What happened?" William muttered as he looked up, his eyes were normal.
"Xana possessed you..." Yumi started to explain, her arms crossed.
"For a year. But we'll give you the details later!" Odd said. "Right now we've got trouble."
Back on the bridge, Xana stood up from against the wall, but still leaned against it casually with one arm outstretched.
"Well... I'm afraid that doesn't matter now. Your secret is blown forever." Xana grinned wickedly as the bottom half of his mask phased out.
"Alright Xana... this ends, right here, right now!" Zaber snapped his fingers, calling up the Devil Arm. The devil arm formed, and he took aim at Xana.
"You just don't get it do you?" Xana waved his hand and created a black portal between himself in Zaber. "Let's see..." He created a blue portal to his left. "Where should I send your attack? Parliament? The children's hospital? Catic High School?" Xana shuffled through these locations in the portal, with an evil chuckle. Zaber realized what he was planning and quickly aimed his arm upwards before it could fire, causing the blast to shoot up into space, striking nothing, going to waste. The blast could be seen from miles away. But better it go to waste than let Xana use it. The Devil Arm disappeared, and Zaber collapsed to his knees, supporting himself with his right arm. The roman numeral on the tattoo changed again, from "VII" to "VI", and the intense pain that usually accompanies it was present as well.
"Damn you Xana!" Zaber shouted at him, the pain clearly reflected in his voice. Ulrich ran forward and triangulated around Xana, preparing an Impact attack, but Xana spun on his heels with a knife in each hand, destroying the clones and knocking the real Ulrich back several feet as the portals he had formed disappeared. Ulrich's sword was knocked off the side of the bridge. Zaber fired several bolts from Styx at Xana, which he dodged agilely. Xana rushed forward with his knife in one hand, and leapt at Zaber, but was met with a swift kick in the face from Ulrich, and a quick flurry of martial arts from both Ulrich and Zaber resulted in Xana being knocked off the bridge and into the water below.
"I didn't know you were trained in hand to hand." Ulrich muttered.
"You didn't think that I have had a gun my ENTIRE life, did you?" Zaber said. This small conversation was interrupted as Xana burst from the water high into the air, roughly ten feet above the bridge, and threw a knife at Ulrich. Ulrich was hit in the chest, and was knocked back several feet, his form broken, he lay there unconscious, bleeding with the knife in his chest. Xana drew a second knife and dived at Zaber. Zaber tried to draw Lethe and shoot him, but he was punched squarely in the chest and knocked to the ground, his gun landed somewhere near the factory entrance. Xana held his knife to Zaber's neck.
"Any last words, human?"
"I've got some for you Xana!" A voice shouted. Xana glanced up to see William standing in the factory entrance, holding Zaber's Lethe. "Die bitch!" He shouted as he pulled the trigger, and three blasts of lightning shot out of Lethe and struck Xana who screamed and withered in pain, the electricity flowing through his body at ten-fold intensity because he was soaking wet. Xana collapsed onto the ground, yellow electricity lines occasionally bursting around his body as his whole body twitched. Zaber rolled away from him and aimed Phlegytheon at William.
"Stand down you two!" Yumi ran out between them. "He's on our side!" Xana reached for his knife and tried to stand back up, but Code Lyoko was entered in the forest tower, and Xana disappeared. Yumi ran to Ulrich's side and helped him up, but he was bleeding pretty badly.
"We can use the scanners to recover from our injuries. Come on." Zaber said as the four of them limped inside the factory, the crowd was now supplemented by cop cars, news choppers, and more. Zaber used Cocystus one more time to raise another ice wall, blocking the factory's only entrance.
Jeremy and Aelita went to the desert sector and deactivated the tower there with little effort, finding it completely unguarded. Zaber used his program to recover the injuries inflicted on himself, Ulrich, and Jeremy, and when all was said and done, it was a half-hour later until Willaim was filled in and they were all out of mortal danger. However, outside, police officer's had been digging their way through the ice wall above. They had a little under an hour until swat, FBI, CIA, enforcers, army, navy, media, and every other possible form of threat would spill into the factory, at which point, all would be lost. The seven of them pondered their next action.
"So... I've been in the supercomputer for a whole year! Everyone must think I'm dead or something!"
"They do... sort of. There was an FBI manhunt and everything, but they never found you or any clues. It's a national mystery." Yumi replied to him.
"Maybe I should call my parents and let them know I'm OK..." William reached for his cell phone.
"Go ahead, but don't give to much away. We're still in real danger here." Odd said. William dialed a number and began to talk. A live news broadcast played on Jeremy's screen, with a female reporter standing outside the factory, as dozens of officer's hammered away at the ice, trying to break through using shovels, picks, and even large rocks.
"For those of you just joining us, we are here at the abandoned Kalis Tech building on the edge of town, where a massive shootout occurred a about half-an hour ago. Witnesses report a man in a strange black costume and two police officer's fighting a group of armed teenagers. What happened in truth is unknown, as every witness has a slightly different account, but all agree that a massive blast of light as well as several supernatural occurrences gave the fight a fantasy quality to it. Not only has this "man in black" disappeared, but a few witnesses report seeing William Dunbar, who if you all recall disappeared last year, causing a massive investigation, fire several shots and then enter the building with the suspects. The group fled into the building, and a wall of solid ice somehow appeared, blocking the entrance. FBI, Swat, CIA, and various other branches of law enforcement are standing by to storm the building once the workers have broken through the ice. No one knows anything yet about the cause of this madness. One of the witnesses had this to say." Sissy appeared on screen, and she looked shock.
"I came when I saw the big blast from my room at the High School. I got here just as it was ending, and one of the people who went into the building was my boyfriend! But he was hurt, he'd been stabbed or something. I don't know what they want with him, just please get them to let him go!" She said.
"Turn that off Jeremy." Ulrich muttered, but Jeremy ignored the request. "And before you ask William, no, she is not my girlfriend."
"Judging from our last experience with the enforcers, they'll shoot first and ask questions later." Jeremy said as he continued to watch the broadcast.
"So what do we do?" Aelita asked him.
"I don't know... wait a second." Jeremy brought up something on screen. He had suddenly remembered the data from Zaber's run the day before that he had not yet analyzed. "Oh no." He said as he began to look through the data. It looked like absolute gibberish to everyone else, but Jeremy translated roughly. "Remember yesterday when you battled Xana in the hall of the core of Lyoko?"
"Yeah." Zaber said awkwardly.
"Remember what he said about the devil arm?"
"Yeah... he said something about the devil arm having a price."
"Well... I just found the price." Jeremy said grimly as he spun around in the swiveling chair. "The roman numerals on you arm are a countdown. The devil arm drains your life-force with each use. It's called Devil Syndrome. When the count hits zero... you'll die."
Code 11: SYNDROME... END
