A loud shatter was heard, then stinging gusts of wind and water annexed the room. "Unh!" Yumi was knocked back from the window as brroken glass covered her like a mosaic. Hiroki screamed for help, but his calls were muffled by the deafening chaos. Even Yumi, a few feet away, could not hear him. She rolled over to the nearest wall and brushed all the glass off of herself and glanced up to see everything in the house falling, breaking, and crashing in a cacophony unparalelled by anything Yumi had ever had the displeasure of hearing. Worst of all, she set sights on Hiroki, curled up in mortal terror, clinging to the floor and bellowing. His Mario Kart game constituted a mashed pile of plastic and wires in a nearby corner.

It seemed like Yumi's world was crushing her. And in a way, it was. The roof was starting to tear.

~~~

Ulrich woke up and instantly took in water. The elevator had been crushed and fell down the shaft. Ulrich, in a mindless panic, floated up to the top of the supercomputer room, where there was a small clearance of air above the surface. He gasped in all the air his body allowed, and looked down to see the supercomputer completely submerged in rainwater. He hoped that the base was waterproof, but his fears rose as the water continued to rise. Ulrich knew what to do. he swam to the opening between the crushed elevator and the shaft. He fit himself through, and swam up as fast as he could. Even he knew getting to the surface was a long shot, he continued to swim. He noticed that the control room door, where Jeremie and the others were, had not given in to the water and eventually got to the top of the shaft and swam out the imploded door to finally float weakly up to the bridge where the flood ended. Ulrich gasped for air again, lightheaded and confused. His wet clothes gave him some reasonable wind resistance. he lay, the rain stinging his face like a thousand wasps, regaining his awareness. Suddenly, like a flash, it occured to him.

"If the whole elevator shaft is flooded, then..."

Ulrich saw in his mind an elaborate picture of what would happen if anyone opened the control room door to go to the scanners. He shook the though out of his mind and stood, promptly falling over. This would be more difficult that he had thought.

~~~

A few minutes earlier...

~~~

"That's it!!" exclaimed a joyous Jeremie. He had just opened up the files that he had "bridged" with the mysterious Bridge program. One of them had the entire Scanner.lyo code embedded in it.

"How did I not think of this?!" he said to himself. Odd and Aelita went up to the control panel to inquire.

"Did you get it, Einstein?" asked Odd.

Suddenly, the crash of Ulrich's elevator accident was heard, to the dismay of everyone in the room.

"What was that?!?" screamed Aelita.

Jeremie was startled and concerned, but continued to work. He seperated the Scanner.lyo code from the other file and created a new Scanner.lyo file. he then copied the code and put it into the new file. Patched and fixed. Ready to go.

"You guys go ahead and get in the scanners," said the overjoyed Jeremie.

Odd and Aelita walked to the undamaged elevator door.

Aelita reached for the open button...