Code Lyoko: The New Girl (BK 1)

Chapter 25

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Saphire should have known better than to assume that X.A.N.A. had decided to take a break from hunting her and her friends. Having gone almost a week without being hit with a new attack, she and the rest of the team had let their guard down. Saphire had spent a lot of time analyzing past X.A.N.A. attacks and it seemed X.A.N.A. liked to execute most of his attacks during the daytime. She had spent most of her first day on edge, thinking he'd be ready to strike at any point - when she was in class; when she was going through books at the library; when she was chatting up her classmates - but he stayed quiet and away. 

It was her own dumb luck to think he would lie low for a while. As far as signs went, Saphire should have realized that the lightning storm raging outside by the time her evening class ended was a classic sign that something bad was rolling her way.

Saphire had skipped dinner once again for extra time in the library. Breakfast and lunch had been spent there as well, except she had actually grabbed a bite to eat, consumed it as quickly as she possibly could without throwing it back up before she went over the yearbooks again. She had been trying to locate the book for the year Franz Hopper may have been a student at Kadic, but it was hard to do the math between Lyokian and Earthian years. She could have easily asked the kind librarian or her friends for answers, but this was a project she wanted to keep to herself for a moment.

Saphire knew she should be able to talk to Aelita about their father, but it wasn't that simple. The Franz Hopper that Aelita (barely) knew was so different from the one she grew up with. There was no way she'd be able to mention him without Aelita noticing the change in her body language or the disdain in her voice. Though she hated to keep them, there were some secrets her baby sister was better off not knowing about.

Getting herself together after Aelita slipped a note under her door to meet her after Jim's curfew sweep was hard, but she managed to keep the tears at bay and join her in her room when the coast was clear. Sleeping close to her sister should have had a soothing effect after the first day she'd had, but it was hard to sleep knowing it didn't matter how close the pair got, there'd always be an invisible Lyoko-sized barrier between them.

She sat alone on the floor between the back racks, fingering through a thick black book from the early 1990s when Saphire heard a noise. She froze, index finger resting at the corner of the page, ready to flip over to the next side. It was a thud she had heard, similar to a book falling to the ground. It was probably nothing, but Saphire had been sitting in silence for the past twenty minutes. There had been few bodies present in the room when she first entered, aside for the librarian, who gave Saphire a warm smile upon her entrance. The other three people, students Saphire didn't recognize made their exit one after the other as time went on, probably heading to dinner or an early bedtime.

The noise could have come from the librarian, who was collecting discarded books and organizing them before stacking them back up on the shelves, but last Saphire had checked, she had been by her table at the front. Saphire held her breath, slowly placed the book on the floor, and rose to her feet. She stayed rooted in her spot but peeked her head out to look towards the front entrance. The librarian's spot was empty.

There was another thud, this time closer. Saphire's heart hiccupped in her chest. She heard a weird scraping noise. She couldn't quite pinpoint what it was but suddenly, Saphire realized that if she turned around, she might find someone or something behind her. She willed her breathing to slow and her movements to seem natural. It didn't matter if she was alone, without a caller, and on an empty stomach, she would show no fear.

The second a pair of cold fingers brushed Saphire's shoulder, she spun around, arm raised with a medium-sized thick enough to knock someone out book, ready to wield it as a weapon, if needed.