Work Text:
“That’ll be four euros fifty please! We’ll call your name when it’s done.”
You're only half-listening, busy trying not to mess up the coffee. It’s only your third day as a barista - living the exchange student dream in a quirky French cafe, determined you’ll go home fluent in the language you’ve chosen to study - and you’re keen to make a good impression. So, head ducked, you focus hard on getting the details right. There's your co-worker at the register, breezy and confident, while you swirl foam on a cappuccino and wait for the panini toaster to chime.
Something she says snags on your awareness.
"I'm sorry, can you spell that for me? I've never heard that name before."
"A, E, L--" says the voice, so eerily familiar that you feel a bit light-headed.
You turn around and she's right there, a pink haired girl in a maroon hoodie. It's bizarre, because you grew up with the animated show and there's no way you should really know what she looks like outside of sharp angles and wide foreheads, but once you see her it's unmistakeable who she is. As though this is part of a dream that's unearthed, something you were just waiting to be reminded of. She doesn't look like Léonie at all, but then you'd never expected that. Evolution totally didn't count.
The words are out of your mouth before you can stop them. "Aelita Schaeffer?"
Her jaw drops too. Your face burns under the scrutiny and your coworker is giving a weird look somewhere between you know this chick? and sort the damn coffee, there's customers waiting. Your mouth works helplessly as you slip the takeaway cup into a cardboard sleeve, Aelita still looking at you, her thought process a mirror of your own.
Except she doesn't know where you've seen her before, and you definitely do.
"It's Stones, actually," she says. Her voice has an edge to it. You remember too late the whole secret identity thing but you haven't watched Code Lyoko properly since you were like thirteen, so. Oops.
"R-Right. Sorry, my mistake."
But there's no coming back from the fact that you know her, and she's going to want answers.
You steal glances at her the rest of your shift. You absolutely cannot help it. She has the same bag and the same hair and the same dainty elfin features. Even the same phone, a busted Nokia that’s seen much better days. She sips her drink and nibbles on a croissant, using that battered, scratched little metallic pink phone to text as she chews her lower lip in thought. It’s like watching a snapshot out of time. You haven't seen the show in forever but it always stuck with you, one of those formative things in your brain that sparked a lifelong interest in science fiction and pink-haired girls.
Maybe it is some elaborate LARP. France is the central hub of the show after all, maybe there’s a convention in town for the die-hard fans. You’ve always been prone to self-indulgent daydreams about your canon faves coming to life and it’s easy to get caught up in the whimsy of it. Is it wistfulness born out of loneliness, perhaps? The exchange programme is great so far, but settling into a new country on your own isn’t without its difficulties.
Then, ten minutes after Aelita arrives, Jeremie Belpois walks in.
It’s definitely Jeremie. He’s so normal looking, quite serious except for when he blushes and hands Aelita half of his croissant. A thick lock of hair falls over his forehead the exact same way as in the show and he’s got those ridiculous loafers and the thick round glasses. You watch them talking to each other, the way Jeremie leans in with his entire body and the way Aelita swings her legs beneath the table. At this angle you can’t see what Jeremie’s working on on his laptop but the curiosity is tearing you apart. Seeing the Lyoko interface in real life would really be something. Then again, isn’t there that fanmade game that emulates it perfectly? If you could just talk to them, that would be cool. Meet some fellow fans.
You’re getting ready to hang up your apron when Jeremie and Aelita look up as one and make direct eye contact with you. It’s intense, a stare held far too long to feel natural, something that makes a shiver roll languidly up your spine.
You need to get your stuff from your locker in the back room and you practically sprint for it, but by the time you press through the crowds to reach their table, they’re long gone.
—
Strange, but not so strange. There’s nothing online about a nearby Code Lyoko fan meetup, no photos on twitter of people showing off their cosplay. Just two people doing their own geeky thing. That evening you stop walking the line between fantasy and reality and you settle into your campus and go bowling with your new cohort.
And yet. That night, laying awake and staring at the ceiling, you find it’s all you can think about. You get up, put a frozen pizza in the oven and watch an episode while it cooks - one picked at random, the one where Ulrich gets amnesia and Sissi manipulates him. Never mind XANA, a world where Sissi Delmas exists is a harrowing thought. Was she always so mean?
Crumbs find their way into your bed and you’re itchy and restless all over.
It's as if you've brushed up against something uncanny, like the shadows in the corners before the lights go back on. Aelita and Jeremie hover right there in your thoughts, even as they talk on-screen in front of you. The universe has handed you a mystery, a clue, an inexplicable hook for your poor wistful imagination. Away from everything and everyone you know, this injection of nostalgia feels like comfort, like friends. Or, thinking about the way they stared at you in the cafe, like... challenge, mystery.
You're so close to something but you don't quite know what.
—
The next chance you get, you go out looking for them along the river Seine.
The walk is long, feels longer still for the crispness of the day, the wind lifting a spray from the river to catch on your cheeks. Cold rips through you, mocking you for not bringing a warmer jacket. Leaves flutter from the trees, dry and soft, swirling into the distance as if to escape the approaching rain.
You follow the path as it curves along the river. Suddenly there’s the bridge ahead of you and the island with the factory on it. Seeing it, you feel a sick wave of vertigo, even though you’re firmly on the ground and standing still. Okay so, this place always existed in real life (you Googled it), but actually being faced with it, the location of incredible childhood nostalgia, makes you shiver. It’s almost magical.
On the bridge you see five silhouettes against the washed-out sky. They’re standing still, waiting for something but you’re too far away to tell what.
It takes another minute before you realise.
They are staring directly at you.
Another ten minutes walk, maybe four or five if you sprint, and you could be up there in the middle of the action. (What action? You don’t even know that something is going to happen.) You keep walking, a brisker pace, and almost collide on the final stretch with a dopey ginger kid and his geeky friend.
The geek is very unforgiving as he looks you up and down. You cross your arms and stare right back.
“What are you doing?” Herve asks, nasally as ever. You’re calling him Herve whether he actually is or not, because this uncanny resemblance seems to be a thing that insists on happening.
“Walking. What’s it to you?”
“You bumped into us. Weren’t even paying attention.”
“You came out of nowhere. Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”
“Like what are you, a teacher?” Hint of a question, hint of fear, like he’s going to be super rude to you now and then find you standing in front of his class the next day, announcing yourself the new Professor of Literature. Which would be hilarious, actually. To be fair, you see how you could pass for a really young teacher. It is kind of hard for people to guess your age.
Nicolas Poliakoff is swinging his arms at his sides, staring up at the bridge. Herve notices this too and snaps his head back. The five figures have vanished, the bridge empty.
Were they testing you? The thought occurs to you in a flash and makes some amount of sense. They must have known Nic and Herve were following them, saw you and decided to get the measure of you, see if you were going to play along. They used you as a distraction. Which means you can’t approach the factory now, not with Nic and Herve in tow. This is your role in the story, keeping the secret safe. Time to think on your feet.
“I’m a university student and I just got here,” you say. “Is there anything good to do around here? River cruises on the Seine, um… fishing?”
Nicolas’ eyes light up. Jackpot.
Herve shoots alternate scathing looks between you and the factory, pinned in place by half an hour of inane conversation about the best kinds of fishing rods and everything noteworthy Nicolas has ever caught. You don’t blame him for being too scared to explore the factory on his own. It’s magical but it’s spooky too, on the verge of collapse, an aura of wrongness emanating from it.
Eventually you somehow steer the two back the way they came. The factory isn’t going anywhere, you tell yourself, and you might just have passed whatever test they’ve set for you.
“There’s a boarding school around here, right?”
Herve rolls his eyes. “That’s where we’re heading. Nic and I go there.”
You’re barely surprised to see the Collège Kadic, or Lycée Lakanal - you can’t get a word in edgeways with Herve to check the name - about as beautiful as it is in the show. It really is a remarkable campus, all pale yellow stonewash and slate roofs. At the gates you hover. Herve catches your eye and gives you a searching look, which you return with what you hope is a casually raised eyebrow. A brainwave hits.
“Thanks for the walk,” you say.
(Of all the people to be your allies in this you can’t believe it’s Nicolas and Herve. They were always such total dorks.)
“Sure,” says Herve. Nicolas grins and tells you that fishing in the moonlight is a wonderful experience, you should try it sometime, which almost makes you laugh.
“What year is it?” you ask, all at once.
“Are you serious? You are so weird.”
“Just answer the question.”
He gives you the present year easily enough. "Duh.”
Okay, that’s not entirely helpful. Try turning over another puzzle piece. You ask him what kind of phone he has.
“What’s that got to do with you anyway? And your accent is terrible, by the way.”
“Are you helping me or not?”
Herve holds up his phone. Another Nokia, a flip-top, the kind where you have to press the same button three times to text the letter K.
“They stopped making those forever ago.”
“So?”
“So what self-respecting kid keeps a phone so out of date? Do those even work any more?”
Herve’s face has gone curiously blank (a state Nicolas’ never quite left) and you aren’t sure if your French is just that bad or if you’ve hit a home run to zero in on the weirdness or if it’s something else entirely. “Answer my question!”
Except he’s… stuck, somehow? Or maybe you yourself are because, now you’re thinking about it, you’re not sure you actually heard the words come out of your own mouth. Herve and Nic have this stricken look, like the entire weight of a remembered lecture on ‘stranger danger’ has crashed down on them at once. Stepping back from you, through the gates, uneasy. At some point you might have shouted, you don’t really remember.
Someone is yelling at you about trespassing on school property and you turn to leave, your feet carrying you back through the streets, vaguely stunned. When the rain comes down you barely even notice.
So maybe you’ve stumbled upon an area in suburban France that happens to be stuck in 2003. A fictional version of 2003 at that. What does it even mean? If you stayed here another year or two, what would happen? Maybe the story just plays itself out on a loop, again and again. Maybe just by virtue of knowing, you’ll get stuck too. A roaring kind of existential panic wells up in you. Isn’t finding out your favourite childhood series exists in real life supposed to be a dream?
At home, drying off in three huge towels with your clothes a sodden lump on the floor, you realised you missed a seminar that afternoon. You end up wearing basically the same outfit as before, shades of white and grey, pulling on a hoodie as your brow sets heavy in thought.
Time to knuckle down and focus on what’s important. (What’s real.)
—
The next few days are a blur of school and work and new friends, nothing that couldn’t be skipped to explore the factory if you really wanted to, but you want to take some time to think, to come up with a plan. You double down on real life as best you can, out of some urgent desire to keep things in check.
Besides, they haven’t approached you either, which must mean something.
You spend a lot of time staring out of windows, at your hands, at the pages of your notebooks. Searching for some clue as to whether or not you’ve lived through these days before.
—
In a fit of desperation, you join a discord server. Feeling more than a little insane, you type into the episode discussion channel what would you do if this was all real? Real talk. Throw in a tongue emoji, edit it out again. The fans are well-meaning and kind, talk about their original characters and provide some genuinely thoughtful discussion about the real life implications of supercomputer tech, but none of it is actually helpful. They also tell you that the real factory was demolished in 2005, which actually doesn’t make any sense.
You call your mum just to make sure that some bit of your life is still grounded in reality. After you hang up, you go back to discord and type in everything that’s happened to you so far, except it doesn’t send. Not on mobile either. No matter how many times you try, the message doesn’t get through.
“Bad internet,” says your flatmate. “Our provider is shit. Bad signal here too. I’ve told the landlord a hundred times but whatever. Let’s see if we can get a discount on next month’s rent.”
She’s made dinner, but the pasta tastes stodgy and wet in your mouth. There’s a faintness in your head that doesn’t seem to stop and you finally lay down to sleep you find yourself shivering in the dark, waiting for something you don’t even know.
The Internet issues persist at work. Everyone blames the bad weather, sudden bouts of sleeting rain that transform every journey between home, school and work into a drowned hell. You almost throw your phone against the wall when it buffers five and a half minutes into Teddygozilla and you’re stuck staring at a gloomy interior shot of the garden shed, of Milly’s creepy teddy bear. So you scrounge up what little information you can, most of it half-remembered, like that William got possessed by XANA, Yumi’s parents live nearby, Franz Hopper (Aelita’s dad, also called Waldo Schaeffer for some reason), lives in hiding on Lyoko. Your mind loops around and around on an endless track.
You’re waiting for something, an involuntary sort of anticipation like an insect creeping up your back. It’s been four days now since you first saw Aelita at the coffee shop and every time someone wearing pink comes in, you flinch.
“You’re still on probation, you know,” says your coworker as you spill your second pour of milk that day.
“Thanks,” you mutter. “I’ll do better. Just not feeling great.”
His hand finds your upper arm, gentle. “You okay?”
“Fine,” is what automatically comes out. Alone in a country that isn’t your own, worried you don’t have the language to express what’s happening to you - not in French or your native. You can’t even explain it in a general sense. And you’re afraid that this is some break from reality that might send your life crashing down if you actually acknowledge it. (Acknowledge what? You’ve seen a girl in pink named Aelita and a factory that some people think no longer exists. There might yet be an explanation.)
“I think I’m getting sick,” you tell him. It’s true that since getting caught in that first rainfall you’ve been feeling fuzzier around the edges, a looming ache in your throat. You wipe up the spill and fight through the end of your shift, making up your mind that you’re going to go and find them.
It just so happens that they find you first.
—
Your flatmate is out and it’s a quiet night in front of the TV for you, copying and pasting the more obscure vocabulary from an article about temporal anomalies into Google Translate, jotting down notes in French. Rain patters down outside and you close the curtains against it, feeling uneasy. You should make dinner, you should take the bins out.
Your nose wrinkles in the kitchen. You really should take the bins out. There’s a sour smell, the food stuck to the bottom of the old takeout containers beginning to congeal.
Shoes on, shrugged into a jacket, keys in your hand in case you’re locked out.
The outside light is an artificial yellow, casting the cars and the lampposts with harsh rigid lines. You’re about to dump the bins when they fall from your hand and something heavy and dark is thrown over your head.
Then… nothing.
—
You awake on the set of a TV show you hadn’t watched in years until recently.
The damp, dusty innards of the old factory, three levels deep. In the deathly quiet you can hear the slow movement of water along the Seine, above and around you behind these walls. The chair you’re tied to is a few good kicks away from falling apart and you debate the merits of breaking yourself free versus sitting still and waiting this out.
In the few seconds it takes to process all of this, the other people in the room turn to you.
At last you are face to face with the final three pieces of the puzzle: Yumi Ishiyama, Odd Della Robbia and Ulrich Stern.
It’s like seeing a photograph of an old ancestor who bears uncanny resemblance, or meeting someone in reality that you thought was part of a dream. That familiarity, with a slightly hollow ring to it. Yumi isn’t Melanie, and so on, but it is them. You know this with a feeling in your guts that should be relief, but feels more like fear. They’re a bit older than you remembered, more like seventeen or eighteen than the adolescents they were in the show. It doesn’t help anything, just lends even more gravitas to them, how serious they look.
Yumi and Ulrich are calm and cold. As soon as you’re awake she tips your head back while he shines a flashlight right into your eyes.
“Hi to you too,” you say, grimacing.
“Eyes look normal,” says Ulrich.
“Unless XANA’s getting smarter,” says Yumi.
“Always a possibility.” Odd Della Robbia movies like a cat. Squatting at your feet, fixing the last of the ropes that bind you to the chair legs, he rolls on the balls of his feet and springs upwards with a feline grace, his toothy grin only short a pair of fangs. He’s tense and cheerful, coiled tight like a spring, slapping one hand on your shoulder as though you’re best friends. “All right good buddy,” he says, underlining the point. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on, huh?”
No one with hair that bright and ridiculous should be so intimidating. Yet here you are.
“I’m not with XANA,” you say.
“Funny, you seem to know an awful lot about it,” quips Ulrich. “Anyway, we’ve started trusting people less and less when they say that, lately.”
You’re desperate to explain but half the words are missing from your vocabulary. If you just had your phone you could put it into Translate, show them the Wikipedia page, even Twitter or AO3. Instead you’re stuck concentrating, following their rapid French as best you can whilst trying not to panic. Yumi has picked up a crowbar and is shifting the weight from hand to hand, more casually than a seventeen year old girl has any right to.
“I want to help,” you say, cutting across the chatter.
“Then you had better start talking.”
Where to start? It’s hard, coming out of whatever they used to knock you out, your senses overwhelmed by the alternating light and darkness, the cold, the fear. All that time in the rain and your throat is so sore you can barely speak. Then there’s the way the words slide over each other even in your mind, that same inexplicable something that froze you at Kadic’s gates. An image appears in your mind of two worlds grating against one another rough and unaligned at the edges, like tectonic plates.
“Uh.. Code Lyoko,” you burst out stupidly, surprised you’ve managed to namedrop the show all meta like that, right in their faces.
“The code Aelita uses to deactivate the tower,” says Yumi. “You know a lot about us too, then.”
Yes but not like that, you want to scream, coughing instead. “I know how it ends,” you tell them, trying to get something through that makes sense. “Jeremie uses some kind of multi-agent thing to defeat XANA.” They look less like they’re about to use that crowbar on you, so you decide to keep talking. “Franz is in the network. William is possessed by XANA.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen it,” you say, shrugging helplessly. This is not how this was supposed to go. When you first saw Aelita in the cafe you had a notion that you might end up friends. Maybe if you’d opened with ‘Aelita Stones? I’ve heard your music, you’re great’. Anything but whatever you said to get yourself into this mess.
“They’ve been stalking us.” Jeremie appears through a side door with Aelita close behind. She’s clutching his shirt, eyes wide. Jeremie’s stare is level and cold, held too long as usual. “Searching walking directions to the factory, pictures of the academy. Staff and student rosters.”
“I need to know it was really you.”
Ulrich takes a step closer. They’ve all shifted slightly, moving in front of Aelita like you’re going to turn into a demon and attack her.
“We take Aelita’s safety very seriously. Knowing her real name like that, saying it out loud in a crowded cafe? We don’t know who’s listening.”
“The government conspiracy stuff,” you say.
“Exactly.”
Odd’s hand meets your shoulder again and this time it’s a grip so firm you swear something pops. His nails are just a bit too long and they’re trying to break skin, even against your jacket. You seethe in pain.
Aelita presses to the front and cups your face in her hands, gently. There’s an unmistakeable sweetness in her, even serious as she is right now. “Please explain as best you can.”
You tell them, haltingly, how this story exists outside of time. Between the sore throat and the disorientation and the shock realisation that your French language skills are nowhere near as good as you thought, god you need to start taking classes more seriously, you try a halting explanation about fiction and time and an animated show from a year long gone. You’re remembering all the ways they’ve fought, how brutal and savage they’ve had to be to survive this. These are dangerous people whose suspicions you’ve fallen foul of.
They have the audacity to look at you like you’re mad. Or maybe it’s just that they’re staring at you kind of vaguely, same as Nic and Herve at the school gates. “Comprenez-vous tous?” you say weakly, but they’re talking amongst themselves faster than you can follow. You try to butt in but you keep losing your train of thought.
You piece together, just about, that they think this is a XANA attack. Jeremie wants to check for anomalies on Lyoko and comb through the return to the past programme, see if you’ve somehow become immune, seen or heard things you shouldn’t have. Where you’ve come from. (You'd like to know that too. Why here, why now? Who else found this place before you, this world out of time in a bend around the Seine?)
Meanwhile you’re thinking about time, the anachronistic nature of old phones and supercomputer technology. How their outfits, nondescript as they are, don’t pin them down to a particular era. (Odd’s barely pins him down to this particular planet.) Everything is leaking into itself, facts wrapping around each other and squeezing your brain tight. You wish you weren’t tied to a chair with torchlight being shone into your pupils for the fifth or sixth time. You want the reassuring weight of your smartphone in your hand as you call your mum.
Instead these paranoid kids, who may or may not be real, are probably going to kill you.
They’re the heroes, though. This might work out okay.
“I mean it!” you tell them. “I’m not possessed and I want to help. I’ve been… caught up in this without even asking for it, but while I’m here I can be useful.”
At last they relent. Free from the chair, you rub feeling back into your numb hands. The Lyoko warriors have relaxed a little and they’re starting to more like the kids from the show you remembered - brave and kind and closer than family. Odd even makes some ridiculous joke, so perfectly on-brand that you bark out a laugh.
Odd, Yumi and Aelita are going to Lyoko to check for anything amiss. Ulrich barely takes his eyes off you as you stand at the wall of the scanner room, seeing them off to the digital world. Your eyes are wide as they step into the scanner, just like you’ve seen them do a million times before. It’s actually kind of anti-climatic, the way they step inside as Jeremie dryly reels off the usual spiel on the overhead speakers, the way the doors close on them with a heavy silence.
Ulrich’s never been one to talk and now isn’t an exception. He broods, leaning against the wall, looking over at you. You examine the familiar-not-familiar tuft of messy hair at his right temple, the heavy shadows beneath his eyes. He's handsome but his face is thin and his cheeks are hollow.
“I don’t understand why you know, or how you got here,” he begins, eventually. “But if you breathe a word to anyone, we will know. Jeremie has his ways.”
“I can believe it,” you say, thinking about all the government systems that kid has unabashedly hacked into. You don't doubt that you'll be under surveillance the entire way home. He's probably already bugged your apartment and tracked your bank account. That's the price of entry.
More silence. The floor is hard and uncomfortable to sit on. Finally Ulrich speaks again, thoughtful and milder in tone this time.
“If you’ve seen all this, why do you want to help us? It’s a tough gig.”
You think it over. Heroism? A break from mundane reality? A sense of purpose? A childhood dream? Something inevitable?
“Saving the world seems like the right thing to do,” you decide to tell him. “And I know stuff. I can help.”
“Like the specifics of Jeremie’s anti-XANA programme?”
“Well, no.” Not that you’d ever been much of a coder, but it’s not like the creators published a technical manual along with the show. Jeremie worked his usual magic, Franz helped somehow, plot happened and XANA was destroyed in the nick of time. Re-examining that vague information, you might not be as useful as you’d hoped. “I just know that it worked.”
Afterwards, the gang returns to school under cover of night. There really was nothing unusual on Lyoko (what does that mean for the last few days of your life?) which is enough for a tentative sense of trust, for now. Jeremie has a lot of questions for you at any rate. Their final words ring in your ears, a warning that you’d better start learning how to code or how to fight, and fast. If you’re on XANA’s radar, there’s no guessing when it will come for you.
You’ve survived one intense experience and that was with the heroes themselves. XANA seems a distant threat in comparison. You grin to yourself as you head back across the bridge, let yourself back into your apartment, shivering but elated. You’re meeting them at the factory again tomorrow and Jeremie is going to run some scans. You’re a Lyoko warrior. Your younger self would be thrilled.
—
Sleep claims you quickly, right there in front of the TV with your laptop open and a cup of tea long gone cold. You dream about the rapid process of assimilation, absorbed into this new ecosystem of paranoia and desperation, camaraderie and survival. Outside of time and space, you dream of inexplicable things.
You're standing in a classroom before a mass of faces and the old-school projector isn't working. An equation is written on the chalkboard. Someone's trainers squeak on the tiles and light up with little flashing purple lights. There's a book in your hand but the words all blur together, which in dream-logic is a metaphor for the text itself. There's two worlds (or one, or three?) knitting themselves together, and an old factory looming on the Seine.
You were meant to be explaining something. Something that was going to realign the world and tie all the loose ends neatly into place. The projector isn't working and the Internet is down. You knew so much.
In the nature of dreams and uncertain realities, you forget as soon as your eyes open.
—
You're on your sofa, wide awake, laptop to the side, empty mug rolled onto the floor. There's a newness to everything and it isn't raining any more. You smile.
You’re going to work so hard at this, devise an exercise routine and a cover story to get out of classes and you’re going to practice code until you can keep up with Jeremie. You doodle ideas for what your Lyoko avatar might look like. You actually get to know, for real.
It’s going to be amazing.
A red eye blinks on your laptop screen.
—
No one prepares you for possession by XANA. How could they? You can imagine what it might be like, have all the character discourse you want about William Dunbar and how he must have felt, but at the end of the day there aren’t words to describe what it does to you: how it violates every single part of you, wrenches through you and leaves you hollow and empty and stinging with loss.
On the floor of the factory you blink awake and see Jeremie and Odd looking down at you. The others went to Lyoko to deactivate the tower and that leaves those two here to comfort you as the last bit of sentient smoke seeps out of your body, leaving you back in control.
You’re trembling so hard you can hardly sit up. Your hands are sticky. There’s blood underneath your fingernails, hair and viscera that isn’t yours. Your face is wet with tears within minutes, hunched over and sobbing as your mind scrambles to shield itself against what’s happened to you. It comes in flashes with an ice-cold horror deeper than anything you’ve ever known.
“What did I do?”
For the first time, they struggle to meet your eyes.
“No one’s dead at least,” murmurs Odd. The hand he presses to your shoulder is kind this time.
“Never gets any easier,” says Jeremie. He and Odd shoot one another a meaningful look and an image floats to the front of your mind like a loose piece of driftwood. A screencap from an episode, Odd on the floor, inches from death by Jeremie’s hands.
That’s life as a hero, or what counts for one in this world anyway. No one’s exempt from… this.
Things are falling out of sync again as the gang try to tell you what happened. Your mind will not accept the facts and you keep losing your train of thought, can’t even remember the most basic of French. It’s all sliding together, warping. You’re an exchange student who found a factory on the river. You attacked innocent people. You want to make coffee and make friends. Lightning shot impossibly from your hands.
Your phone is broken, although you don’t remember how. Jeremie mutters something about having spares and hands one to you. A bulky Nokia, black, no touch screen, straight out of two decades prior. You stare at it. It feels like a rite of passage. Some thought ghosts through the back of your mind about a forced reduction in screen-time; it’s enough to make you reach out and take it. You feel the cool skin of Jeremie Belpois’ fingers against yours as the phone changes hands.
“Either way, we’ll have to run a return to the past.”
“To when?”
“We can go back as far as a week, if we wanted.”
Yumi gives you a meaningful look.
“Do you still want in?” she asks. You remember that she always felt more guarded and serious than the rest of them. XANA went for her without mercy and it’s pretty much universally agreed that she stopped thinking of Lyoko as a game very early on, desperate for it to be over as soon as possible.
Here you are, then.
It’s decision time.
—
Later, filled with the horror of what you’ve done and your decision locked in, you sit by the holoprojector and face the light bravely. Jeremie says the words with the exact cadence he does in the show, something that makes you feel warm. (It’s always had this mysticism to it, the return to the past programme. You used to daydream about the things you could do if you had the power to control time.) No matter what happens next this has been… well. Your younger self could never have even dreamed.
It’s so pure and white, like sunlight on snowfall or the hottest part of a roaring flame. You stare slack-jawed into it and it’s almost comforting.
Almost.
—
The coffee shop is busy on this cool, cloudy day. There's your co-worker at the register, breezy and confident, while you swirl foam on a cappuccino with utmost focus. Three days in and you’re still getting the hang of it, determined to make a good impression.
A girl in a maroon hoodie walks by the window and catches your eye. The panini toaster chimes.