Before the Storm

/

Lyoko, she thought, What has happened to you?

The blue geometry of Sector Five yielded no answer. There was no shift of the air, nor creeping movements of shadows to interrupt the stillness; the sector could have been untouched since she last stepped foot in it, but Aelita knew that to be false for the evidence stood before her.

It unnerved her. Lyoko was supposed to be timeless, and yet so much about this world had changed.

She stared up at the tower, black and blocky with red lava veins which pulsed as though with living energy. It stuck out, an irregular blemish on the landscape, taking over the soft white towers of old. With a tentative hand Aelita reached out to brush her fingertips against the mirrored surface, staring back at herself as she did so. Her reflection stood straight, feet slightly apart; a Lyoko avatar, in its slimline bodysuit and booted feet, that screamed efficiency and sleekness, a warrior bred for battle. And yet... those eyes that stared back at her from the tower's surface belied everything. They were so full of uncertainty, haunted with shadows of fear.

It had taken so long to embrace the relief that came with the fight being over. Now, it was as though she had stumbled into a nightmare, and it was so unfair how easily that fear flooded back. Yet here she was, years later, all her old instincts returning.

Aelita turned around, scrutinising the landscape with a stern, sweeping gaze. A motion formed of habit, something that followed her into the real world for months and months after everything had happened. The paranoia, the constant overhanging threat of death.

She breathed deeply as she took in the scene. Good. No monsters.

For now.

She basked for a moment in the eerie calm before the storm, a pocket of untarnished time contained within this small blue bubble. Who knew when it would all end, this time?

With a resigned and silent sigh, Aelita stepped forward into the tower.