Code Lyoko: Omega

Chapter Twenty Two - Alpha & Omega

The next day following XANA's attack, Omega and the Lyoko Warriors went about their day without incident. After classes were concluded, Omega and the Lyoko Warriors met at the Factory. 

Odd: So what's XANA's latest plan for world domination today?

Jeremy: XANA has been pretty quiet since his last attack. 

Ulrich: That doesn't mean he's not plotting anything. 

Aelita: Jeremy and I have run thorough scans on Lyoko. We've detected no sign of activity from XANA. But there's something....troubling.

Omega: What happened? 

Jeremy: With XANA's silent for the moment, we tried to map out that Replika we found a week ago. But when we tried to....it was gone. I couldn't find any digital signal anywhere. 

Upon hearing this, Omega and the Lyoko Warriors fell silent for a moment. They all remembered how massive Valhalla was. It was easily the largest sector on Lyoko they had ever seen. To hear that it was gone without a trace came as a shock. 

Yumi: How does an entire Sector just....disappear? 

Ulrich: I'm with Yumi. That place was massive. There's no way that something like that could just disappear. 

Aelita: Jeremy and I tried to find any trace of this Replika, but we couldn't. We can only assume that this is Shadow Fist's work.

Odd: Man those Shadow Fist guys are hardcore. I mean....blipping out entire worlds on Lyoko without a trace? That's crazy. 

Omega: How...how is that possible?

Jeremy: We don't know. Our best guess is that whoever is leading the Shadow Fist has intimate knowledge of Lyoko's layout. They might also be an expert programmer. If...if I had to guess, they might also have been a part of Project Carthage. 

As Jeremy laid out his theory about the leader of the Shadow Fist, the rest of the Lyoko Warriors didn't know how to respond to this. It wasn't long before Omega's thoughts fell to her parents. 

Omega: Do...do you think my parents had any involvement in this? 

Aelita: We don't know for sure, but we did dome digging on the work your parents did prior to joining Project Carthage. Jeremy. 

Jeremy then pulls up two separate videos: one showing Nala Se and the other showing Royce Hemlock. Jeremy first plays the video of Nala Se delivering a lecture to fellow geneticists. 

Nala Se(Video): With today's technological and scientific advancements, I believe now more than ever that cloning can be achieved. And with cloning, no longer would patients needing an urgent organ transplant need not wait for a viable doner to be found among countless people. A simple DNA test and lab work can be the difference between life and death. 

Jeremy: Based on what I was able to pull up, Nala Se has been a staunch advocate of cloning.

Odd: Cloning, huh? This could either end up like Clone Wars of Blade Runner. 

Ulrich: Wasn't Blade Runner about androids? 

Odd: Same thing....kinda....

Jeremy then plays a video of Royce Hemlock. In this video, Royce Hemlock speaking to his colleagues. 

Royce Hemlock(Video): Alan Turing once said that "A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human." He was correct in ways even he could not fathom. In this new digital age, computers have inseparable to our daily lives. But we've only scratched the surface of their potential. On one hand, we could connect the world in days our ancestors could only dream of. On the other hand, we could unleash chaos upon our enemies without the loss of a single soldier. My greatest hope is to be part of a grand moment in this field much like Alan Turing did when he developed the Turing Machine. 

Jeremy: The last project I could pull up was something called.....Project Alpha And Omega. But we found nothing on that. If I had to guess, I'm guessing that project was absorbed into Project Carthage. 

Odd: Now this Hemlock guy I get. Big computer guy. But Nala Se? A geneticist and clone advocate? I'm no scientist, but how exactly do the two connect?

Aelita: We don't know. What we do know is that Nala Se and Royce Hemlock worked at Project Carthage for Franz Hopper. To what end, we don't know. But between this and the Shadow Fist and XANA, I'd say we got a lot of work ahead of us. 

At first, Omega was despondent at the lack of answers. But she quickly became hopeful. 

Omega: I....I know we'll find the answers we seek in due time. We just have to be patient and be ready. Whether it's XANA or....Shadow Fist, we'll find a way.

Odd: That's the spirit, Omega! Keep this up and you might even make Ulrich more cheery! 

Ulrich: You're real funny, Odd. It must be so easy coming up with funny jokes. 

Odd: You should really take a cue from Omega here. I mean she's got more reasons to be grumpy, yet here she is, cheerful and hopeful. Kinda reminds me of myself when I first got involved in this whole thing. Man that seems so long ago. 

Omega lets out a chuckle in response to Odd's joke. 

Jeremy: That's about it for the day. Aelita and I will stay behind to run some more scans on Lyoko. The rest of you can go. 

With that, Omega and the rest of the Lyoko Warriors with the exception of Jeremy and Aelita left the Factory. In that moment, the mystery surrounding both Omega's parents and the Shadow Fist became even more apparent.