Classes were awful. Even with the various broken naps they'd gotten last night, Aelita kept nodding off to the drone of her teachers' voices, as did her friends. They looked out for each other, kicking and pinching each other awake, and it was invaluable. But as consequence, everything was slowly feeling more and more surreal to her sleep-deprived brain, to the point she sometimes wondered if yesterday even had happened. Only the weight of her father's pendant around her neck assured her that it had.

As she shuffled zombie-like through the lunch line, she bumped into the boy in front of her. Aelita mumbled an incoherent apology.

"It's fine, Aelita," William said. "You okay? You don't look that good."

Aelita gaped at him, suddenly feeling as if she'd been struck by lightning. His voice was-and that face, that hair-yes, that was it! That's why the boy in her memory-dream had looked so familiar! He'd looked just like William! Could he have been William?

It only took a second for her to realize how stupid that sounded. That memory would have taken place over ten years ago. William would have been little, and that boy must surely be an adult now.

"Uh, do I have something on my face?"

She realized she'd been staring. Aelita shook herself. "No, no...I'm just tired. Didn't get a lot of sleep."

His mouth twisted wryly. "Nightmares?"

"For once, no. It was just-" She wanted to kick herself as she scrambled for an explanation. "-one of those nights where you can't go to sleep no matter how much you try, you know?"

"Ah, yeah. I hate those."

At this point, they reached Rosa. Aelita held out her tray for her portion of meatloaf. Her mind was in a frenzy; as she moved down to let William get his meal, she snuck another glance at him. The resemblance was so striking…

"Do you have an older brother?" she asked abruptly.

A single eyebrow arched. "No, I don't. Aelita, are you sure you're okay?"

She sighed and decided that, group decision be damned, she was going to tell him a little. "Over the break, I started having nightmares about losing my mom. It made me start thinking about family, and that's why I was looking into my dad yesterday, and...I don't know, the whole notion of family's been weighing on my mind a lot." She shrugged. "Sorry for the weird question."

"No, you're fine. And I'm sorry about your mom."

"Yeah...me too."

Aelita looked around for an empty table. Kadic's cafeteria was full of reunited friends catching up. She could see the rest of the Lyoko Warriors sitting by a window, Sissi among them. Herve and Nicholas were not far away, the former shooting scowls at Sissi's back. Milly and Tamiya were already moving between tables, sniffing out the latest Kadic news. The buzz of the cafeteria was, all in all, normal.

And yet, for some reason, she felt like…

No. It was nothing.

"So," she said to William, tilting her head to a table tucked into a back corner. "Let's sit down, and you can tell me about your break…"

The first flight to France had taken off at January 8, 7 AM. Through Eva, XANA had procured the necessary falsities for international travel-a visa, parental authorization, silly things like that. He had obtained the necessary luggage, including articles of clothes and a laptop, and used the free time and free Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet. His tracks were covered, and all the preparations for Eva's arrival to Kadic were in progress. It would take several days before she could start attending classes, but that was fine. XANA had waited months already; he could wait a little longer for his vessel to be formally accepted as an American foreign exchange student.

Now, Eva was settled into a comfortable first-class seat, patiently awaiting arrival. Across the aisle was a woman in a dark suit, concentrating on her laptop. On his other side, a sleeping elderly man was drooling all over a five-hundred-dollar tie. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Other than that, it was empty. As the plane glided through the air, a hostess approached, pushing a little cart of drinks. "Hello, Ms. Skinner. Would you like anything to drink?"

Over the hours, Eva's voice had slowly recovered. Still, XANA decided to play it safe. He tapped Eva's throat, then gestured at the sleeping man's drink. He made sure to smile as he did so.

"A cognac?" The woman chuckled. "I don't think that'd be suitable, miss. Maybe you'd prefer a nice glass of fruit juice?"

The smile remained fixed in place. He gave a slight nod, not allowing any sign of his inward seething to show. Human fool, you know not who you condescend.

The hostess searched about her little cart, poured out a cup of red liquid, and moved on. XANA didn't touch it right away; instead he watched her go, trying to calculate what had gone wrong in that exchange, to make her react in a way he hadn't anticipated. Were some beverages considered acceptable for certain humans and not others?

No matter. The mistake had been noted, corrected, and recorded for future reference. It would not happen again. He sipped the liquid, rolled it around on his tongue, allowed the taste to permeate his senses. Delectable.

Settling Eva back into the seat, XANA closed his eyes. For now, he had many long hours to calmly reflect and plan ahead. There were a great many things to consider; how to befriend those children, how to earn their trust.

And above all else, how to kill them.

ACT I END

A/N: A short chapter, this time, but Act I-the prologue of this whole thing, so to speak-is done!

Book One ended up almost completely scrapped and revised, because a lot of it is a recap of the series from Aelita's friends to an amnesiac Aelita. I've cut out the recap since if you're reading a Code Lyoko fic, you probably know the source material, and edited her amnesia to better fit her amnesia in the show. More "recurring retrograde amnesia" than "massive sudden blank".