A.N.: Those of you who have watched a lot of code
lyoko may recognize the beginning

Jeremie felt triumphant. He had defeated XANA's Specter of Franz Hopper and regained the trust of his friends. He jumped into the now vacant seat in front of the super computer's main frame and started to hack. Once he was ready, he hit the ENTER key. On lyoko the three warriors each took a hit from the opposing creepers. Ulrich fell off the brick shaped ledge as he was broken up into thousands of small blue squares and a boy shaped grid, that disappeared completely. Odd and Yumi cried out

"Ulrich"

Odd said "Oh it can't be"

Jeremie's voice came from nowhere "Come on, don't be so pessimistic Odd"

Yumi: "Jeremie ?"

He answered "Yes, I'm back. Come on! Let's start over." he reprogrammed Odd and Yumi's weapons. The later attacked.

Odd, seeing that they now had weapons, destroyed the remaining creeper, and giggled "nothing like my trusty old gear."

But Yumi was still worried. " what about Ulrich?"

Again, Jeremie replied "All's well. I managed to reprogram the materialization just in time" in the scanner room Ulrich emerged from the center scanner and fell into Aelita's arms panting. She went to lyoko through it and was in the ice region and ran for the end of the sector.

"Thanks Jeremy" Odd said, shooting the flying manta that had stopped to attack them.

By this point XANA had had enough. It had made one overplay, one mistake, and Jeremie had figured out its entire plan, and this was not the kind of trick it could repeat. The boy was too clever and too intelligent. Now it had no more monsters and even if it did the brats could be devitalized and would return tostop it another day. Now there was only one thing left to do.

At this point Aelita made it to the end of the sector and herd Jeremie again "I'm entering the code CIPEO" and a white sphere with the eye of XANA on it in dark blue came up from the between the small ice plates and swept her away to sector 5.

Immediately Jeremie felt strange snakes of static hate curl into his ears, through his head and into his throat were it plugged his windpipe. He started wheezing and gasping for air. He dropped to the ground with only one thought 'XANA', as Ulrich came into the room. "Jeremie!".

Aelita got to the aria were the team had fought an army of creepers. "Jeremie, I'm in the core zone." She was surprised to hear Ulrich's voice instead of the computer nerd's and was frightened at his words.

"Deactivate the tower hurry up!"

If Ulrich, who's grades were quite poor, had to fill in for Jeremie, a true genius, than something was wrong, and judging by the tone of his voice something was very wrong. She ran to the tower room as fast as her virtual legs could carry her. She ran into the tower room, were Yumi and Odd "Hurry Jeremie's in trouble!" She was forced to stop at the edge of the cliff Ulrich had fallen off of. The gap between her and the tower was too great to jump. She looked around desperately for some other way across. Her eyes landed on her friends and she had an idea. "Yumi"

Jeremie was doing his best to stay alive by going against every active instinct he had and trying to stay limp as Ulrich held his torso off the ground, but he made a point of looking directly at him to prove that he was not dead. 'Yet' hethought darkly as his vision began to blur. Then Jeremie found that he could no longer control himself he started gasping again as panic, oxygen deprivation and instinct combined forces to cloud his mind.

"Jeremie, hang in there Aelita's almost to the tower" Ulrich said trying to comfort his dying friend but he could see the obstacle before Aelita on the screen and in his head and felt his own terror.

Jeremies's thoughts became slow and incoherent, but he tried to pull them together. Finally, slowly, he remembered that he had a plan for just this sort of thing. He waisted no time in trying to tell Ulrich. He wheezed painfully "Code... Phoe... nix... Jer..." His eyes rolled back in his head as he had one last clear thought 'You'll pay for this XANA.' And his last breath escaped him.