New Code

Neon and Ehvy stood at the gates of Kadic Academy, numerous bags about them. Best friends and neighbors, their mothers sent them off the a new boarding school together. After a few moments of staring into the tree-covered campus, they took a second to look at each other, then picked up their bags. Neon had memorized the campus online and knew exactly where to go to find their room. Still, when they ran into two boys who offered to give them a hand, they looked at each other and nodded. The boys took a few of their bags–there were a lot of them–and led the way to the girls dorms, which were the second level of the three level building. The top floor was the boys, and the bottom level was the study rooms. The two boys, who introduced themselves as Nobel and Karth, told them about their new school.

“As students, we get discounts at most of the local stores. As boarders, we can only leave campus on Friday afternoons, weekends, and Monday mornings. Breakfast is served until 9, lunch is 1 to 2, and dinner is from 7 to 10,” said Karth.

Nobel took over. “Lights out is at 12. Oh, and we’re not allowed in the dorms without a pass between 8am to 1, and 2pm to 5.”

“Alright,” Neon said. “Thanks guys.”

“So,” Ehvy began. “How long have you guys gone here?”

“Since middle school,” said Karth.

“Oh, that’s cool,” she continued. “So you must know everything about anything Kadic, right?”

He looked to Nobel. “I guess so,” he shrugged.

“We want to make a fresh start here, so we need to know who to and not to hang out with. It’s not really a big deal, but we don’t want drama. Right, Neon?”

“What? Oh, yeah! Right. No drama.”

Karth and Nobel thought for a minute. “Well,” Nobel said slowly. “There’s Sisi Delmass. She’s the principals daughter and thinks she’s all that. She really likes to start stuff with everyone–well, everyone but Karth, but that’s because she has a thing for him.”

“But that’ll never happen,” He laughed.

“And there’s Milly and Tamia. They’re best friends and work for Kadic News, which is on the website and in a weekly paper. They’re cool to hang out with sometimes, even though their eighth graders, but if you have gossip, they’ll use it whether or not you’re friends.”

“Let me guess,” Neon popped in. “Once they print it, the entire school makes fun of you.”

“Pretty much.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Ehvy laughed. “We need friends who are chill, won’t sell our secrets to the media, and aren’t totally into everyone hating them.”

“I hate the media,” Nobel said.

“We  hate the media,” Karth corrected. “And hating.”

“We also hate war,” Nobel added, nodding.

Neon and Ehvy looked at each other, smiling, Neon struggling to keep her laughter contained. “You guys want to have dinner with us tonight?”

The boys exchanged a look, then nodded. “Totally. They’re serving spaghetti tonight.”

“Good. We’ll be waiting in the cafeteria for you then.”

The boys left a few minutes later. When their foot steps could no long be heard from the room, the two girls burst into laughter. Ah, boys who weren’t subtle at all.

“I don’t know what’s cooler,” Neon said, opening one of her bags and pulling out a hair brush. Her fiery-red hair was tangled from the wind and slight humidity, and her ice-blue eyes hurt from the florescent lights. “That we made two new friends, or that there’s spaghetti for dinner.”

They made eye contact. “Spaghetti,” they said together. 

“I hope this school works out for us,” said Ehvy, brushing out her own mahogany locks, which spiral-curled at the bottoms, differing from Neon’s own straight hair. “I mean, there’s no reason for us to fail classes since we live at school, I know. But…I just don’t want to deal with drama.” She rubbed her eyes, which were green like jade. “God, I hate these lights,” she muttered.

“Well, it’s a lot less drama that we’re used to. No parents, no siblings, no cousins…just peers. It’ll be great. We…We’ll love it here.”

It was Friday afternoon, so they had no classes. They planned to take a walk around campus, through the park. They hoped to make more friends and a good first impression on Kadic Academy. On Monday morning, they were meant to meet with the principal about their class schedules. Their parents had called in about them, so they were almost certain to have all of their classes together, save for an elective. Neon was looking forward to starting their classes, while Ehvy was looking forward to making friends. Of course, Neon wasn’t as good at making friends like Ehvy was, and preferred to befriend Ehvy’s friends anyhow. In return for the friends, Neon often gave her the answers on tests. It was a general win-win.

Hand in hand, Neon and Ehvy left the dorm building and head for the park, their pace leisurely. They were in no hurry to see anything in particular. Neon was hoping to find a place to relax in the park in the future, while Ehvy hoped to run into someone new–or the two boys, at least.

The park, covered in trees, had a series of foot-paths. After coming to a fork, they decided on heading right, which led further into the park as opposed to staying by the fence.

About five minutes into their walk, Neon looked over to the sound of footsteps walking briskly, and saw two people heading diagonally away from them. She patted Ehvy on the shoulder and pointed, not taking her eyes off the people. As she felt her best friend look over, she realized–

“Is that Nobel and Karth?” Ehvy asked. “Where are they going? There it’s a path over there!”

“Should we…do you want to follow them?”

“Let’s do it!”

They slowly wandered off the path, matching their pace steadily behind the two boys. Nobel was shorter and less lanky than Karth, with more skin color and light blonde hair. Karth was paler with curly dark brown hair, and a bit of a hunch from being so much taller than everyone else. 

Neon and Ehvy trailed the boys for nearly six minutes when they suddenly stopped in a small clearing and looked around them, the girls dropping to their knees behind a bush. They kept their eyes up, watching the boys. Karth knelt to the ground and pulled a sewage lid that neither of the girls had noticed before, and they both climbed in, Nobel sliding the lid back over the tunnel before disappearing. After waiting for half a minute, the girls climbed in after them.

After working through the tunnels, they came to a dead end, where they climbed up another set of rungs right behind the guys.

Back in the open air, they ran across a bridge to an old, abandoned factory, swinging to the ground on dead wires–wondering how the hell an entire staircase had broken off without a trace–and throwing themselves into the freight elevator just as it was closing.

Nobel and Karth blinked. “What the hell?!”

“Is this some sort of secret school hide-out?” Ehvy asked, brushing herself off. “Cuz I have to say: it’s pretty clever. The principal would never find out.”

Nobel shook his head. “What are you guys doing here? Did you follow us?”

Neon shook her head. “Oh, no way. We followed the yellow brick road here, and just so happened to find you guys. Thanks for holding the elevator for us.”

Karth glared. “This is our place. You two can’t be here. It’s too dangerous.”

“That is such bull crap!” Ehvy said. “If you two can be here, so can we.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed angrily. “Fine. Whatever. But don’t touch anything!” He opened the key pad by the door and pressed in a code, which made the elevator stop and open up to a huge room with a computer system.

“Woah,” Ehvy gasped as they all got out, her and Neon two steps behind. “What is this? Some sort of video game?”

“Sort of,” Nobel said. “This is a super computer that holds a virtual world called Lyoko.”

“Bad ass,” Neon nodded in approval. “So who else is coming?”

“What? Nobody. We told you: this is our place.”

“So you just…hang out here and play video games alone?”

“Well,” Karth said, chuckling. “When you put it like that, it makes us sound like total nerds.”

Neon and Ehvy looked at each other, then back at the guys. “Can we play?”

The guys looked at each other. Nobel took a step toward them, and Karth sat in front of the monitor and started it up. “Look,” Nobel began. “Nobody else knows about this stuff, and we can’t tell them. There’s a lot of stuff going on here that’s really dangerous. We could get in a lot of trouble for being here and messing with it.”

“We won’t tell anyone!” Ehvy insisted. “We don’t want any kind of trouble at school, including two guys with a secret.”

“Nobody will hear about it. Ever. Promise!” Neon added.

Nobel sighed, and so did Karth. “Okay. So Lyoko is a virtual world inside the super computer. In it, there are monsters and stuff controlled by a very dangerous artificial intelligence called Xana. Xana is trapped inside Lyoko and seek a way to get out by activating towers on Lyoko that allow him to access more data and power that allows him to take control of electricity herein the real world. We’ve found a way to temporarily deactivate the towers from the super computer, but it takes too long and way too much energy considering it doesn’t last long. But about a week ago, I found the program that’ll allow us to virtualize ourselves onto Lyoko where we can kill the monsters. I found a program that allows one of us to enter a tower to deactivate it, but so far it’s only temporary. I think it’s because the program isn’t strong enough, or Xana is just too strong.”

“And I,” Nobel piped. “Think it’s because we are the right people to deactivate it. But since this has been our secret, I haven’t been able to bring anyone who might be the right one.”

“When we first turned on the super computer,” Karth continued. “and deactivated the first tower, I discovered an automatic  program that, well, it sounds crazy, but it takes us back in time. The Return To The Past. It takes us back to right before the attacks in the real world, and nobody remembers anything. Aside from us, because we’ve been to Lyoko.”

Neon nodded. “So you couldn’t ask anyone for help anyways because you couldn’t send them in to see because then they would remember everything.”

“Exactly.”

Ehvy blinked a few times, taking it all in. “So you could activate the Return To The Past, and Neon and I wouldn’t remember anything?”

“Yup.”

“So…Are you going to?”

“Are you going to snitch on us?”

“No way! We already promised, right Neon?”

“Yeah. We’re here to help.”

Karth blinked at Neon. “Help?”

“Yeah, duh! Maybe one of us can deactivate the towers!”

“You never know,” Ehvy agreed.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and if you aren’t then we’re right back where we were, only with two more people on Lyoko.”

“Well, are you both on Lyoko at the same time?”

“Yeah, otherwise one of us is alone and unguarded.”

“Okay, so even if we aren’t able to take care of the towers, you’ll have one more fighter and someone to watch the computer.”

“Plus,” Ehvy piped. “Two more people that you won’t have to lie to.”

The guys looked at each other. Karth whispered something too quiet for the girls to hear, and Nobel responded, equally as quiet. After a long minute of this, they looked back at the girls.

“Alright,” Karth said with a sigh. “Welcome to our…club.”

Before the girls could respond with much more than grins, the computer started beeping loudly.

“Xana’s attacking,” Karth said, his fingers flying across the key board. “Nobel, you take Neon down to the scanner room and I’ll send you both in.”

“What about–” Ehvy began.

Karth cut her off. “You stay with me. If they need help or if Neon can’t deactivate the tower, we’ll go in and see if you can.”

They all nodded and Nobel too Neon back into the elevator, as Karth started up the virtualization process.

 

(Code Lyoko is property of Moonscope and Cartoon Network and France and stuff. I do not own anything but my own characters.)