The Secret War (Jack Blank Adventure) (37 page)

“Are you?” Skerren asked.

“Yes,” Khalix said, taunting Jack in a voice only he could hear. “You are, Jack.
We
are, whether you like it or not. You can’t fight the future.”

“No,” Jack told Skerren. “And if you’ll fight with me, I’ll prove it to you. But I need your help. I need you to finish this with me. Please.”

“I’m ready,” Allegra said.

“I’m more than ready,” Jazen said, pounding a fist into his palm. “Let’s do it. I’ve never wanted to hit anything so bad in my whole life.”

Jazen kicked his heels into the sides of his dragon and dove down at the floating mountain, with Jack riding shotgun. Trea, Allegra, and Zhi charged after them into battle. Jack looked back and saw that Skerren was coming too. He was the last one in line, but he was coming just the same.

One of the Left-Behinds started shooting again as the dragons raced toward the cavern. Jazen and the School
of Thought students took evasive action as some of the other Para-Soldiers raised their weapons to fire. Glave ripped the gun out of the first shooter’s hands and kicked him off the side of the mountain. “How many times do I have to tell you morons?” he shouted as the trigger-happy Para-Soldier fell screaming. “Don’t shoot at the emperor’s son!”

The other Left-Behinds lowered their weapons, and then scattered as the dragons swooped in, swiping across the ledge with their tails to clear a path where Jack and his friends could land. The cavern was too tight a space for the dragons to fly in, but they were still able to knock several Left-Behinds out to join the one that Glave had thrown away. Jack and his friends dismounted their dragons and confronted the enemy head-on.

Skerren leaped off his dragon high up at the roof of the crystal cavern and cut loose a series of stalactites that were hanging off the ceiling. Each one that fell landed with a deadly impact, impaling Left-Behind Para-Soldiers and crushing them where they stood. Skerren rolled his landing to come up in a fighting stance, slicing away at more Rüstov fighters. He was taking on large groups,
moving toward them without pause, as if he were the one who outnumbered them. Apparently he had gotten over his reservations about this fight. Trea immediately split into what looked like three T2s upon entering the crystal chamber. She punched Left-Behinds and made holes in them, doing damage right alongside Skerren. Her three selves working together were a force to be reckoned with.

Glave started waving his arms and yelling at his men as the tide of battle turned against him. The Rüstov spy grabbed a gun off the ground and thrust it into the arms of a random Left-Behind. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Them you can shoot!” he said, pointing at Skerren, Zhi, and Trea. “Fire your weapons! Kill them!”

As soon as the Left-Behinds primed their weapons and turned toward Jack’s friends, the Mysterrii descended upon them from above. They had inched their way across the cavern using the crystal stalactites like monkey bars and now dropped in on the unsuspecting Para-Soldiers. The Mysterrii saved Skerren’s, Zhi’s, and Trea’s lives, disarming the Rüstov and buying the children just enough time to take cover behind crystal stalagmites and the flaming wreck of Hypnova’s ship. The Left-Behinds started
throwing the Mysterrii off their backs and out over the ledge of the cliff, and Zhi sent his dragons down to catch them.

Meanwhile, Jack, Jazen, and Allegra broke for the SmarterNet, racing against time to reach its core and the supertransmitter waiting inside. Jack and Jazen led the way. Jack’s connection to machines, fuzzy as it was because of the last lingering nullifier, allowed him to see the SmarterNet well enough, and he knew Jazen’s mechanical eyes would have no trouble getting through its cloaked state. Allegra still bumped into near invisible walls and low-hanging equipment as she followed Jack and Jazen, but she kept herself in a semifluid state on the way through and avoided getting hurt. The Rüstov soldiers guarding the SmarterNet tried to stop them, but Jazen ran through them like a Mecha possessed whenever they got in his way. He literally tore into the first one he came across and ended up ripping off its bionic arm without even meaning to. He stopped to look at the severed metal arm and then at Jack like he didn’t know his own strength.

“I gave you a few upgrades.” Jack shrugged.

“I can see that,” Jazen replied. “Very nice work.” Jazen slammed the wounded Para-Soldier into the wall, swinging the severed arm like a baseball bat, and pressed forward.

Jack, Jazen, and Allegra continued to fight their way through the SmarterNet, pushing the Rüstov back. They had just made it to the second level when Stendeval checked in with an urgent message. “Jack, the Mechas are about to wake up. We have minutes left, maybe less. I need to know where you stand.”

“You have to hold off!” Jack shouted into his wrist. “We’re almost there. Jazen is here with me—it worked! Do you hear me, Stendeval? The cure-code works!”

“Which way, Jack? Up again?” Allegra asked as she shot an arm across the floor at a Left-Behind, pushing it back.

“This way!” Jack shouted. “Don’t go up, go in!”

Jazen punched his hand into a Para-Soldier’s stomach and started ripping out wires. It tried to shoot him, and he turned its gun around at another Left-Behind that was coming up behind it. Stray bullets shorted out the SmarterNet’s cloaking device.

“Be careful!” Jack told Jazen, pushing the gun down
and away from Jazen. “No shooting in here. We need the SmarterNet intact.”

“Sorry, Jack,” Jazen said. “I think I’ve been in storage a little too long.” Jack shook his head and pointed the way toward the SmarterNet’s core. Jazen dropped the gun and kept moving.

Outside, Jack’s friends were starting to get overwhelmed. Jack could hear it in their voices as he made his way through the SmarterNet.

“Zhi!” Skerren shouted. “Bring the dragons back around! We need them to breathe some fire on these guys.”

“They’re all still down with the Mysterrii,” Jack heard Zhi say. “Besides, my dragons don’t breathe fire.”

“What?” Skerren shouted. “What kind of dragons don’t breathe fire?”

“Jack, we’d better hurry,” Allegra said. “It’s getting ugly out there,” she added, looking below her.

“We’re here,” Jack said, running down a short flight of steps to a landing at the center of the SmarterNet’s middle level. It was a small circular platform with a waist-high railing that looked out on the crystal chamber. Jack looked around at the platform and saw thousands of wires, cables,
and gauges all surrounding a bright beam of red light the size of a lamppost. His powers felt nonexistent next to it. “This is it,” Jack said, spotting the super-relayer-connector component Midknight had shown him a blueprint of earlier that night. It was sitting on a computer console at the base of the red light, safe under heavy bulletproof glass. That was just fine. Jack didn’t want anything bad happening to that transmitter. The nullifier was a different story.

“What’s that?” Allegra asked, pointing at the red beam of light.

“That’s info-light,” Jack said, his eyes darting around the SmarterNet core. “Concentrated data packaged into a ray of light for the fastest data transfer possible. It’s the SmarterNet’s signal.”

Allegra reached out to touch the red info-light beam. It made a hissing noise when she touched it, like butter melting in a frying pan. “Ah!” Allegra cried out, pulling back her hand.

“Don’t touch it!” Jack said to Allegra. “Allegra, a ‘concentrated ray of light’ is just another way of saying ‘laser beam.’ This one here is the largest data ray I’ve ever seen.”

“Now you tell me,” Allegra said, rubbing her hand.

“Stay focused, guys,” Jazen said. “We’re about to have company.”

The staircases leading down to the SmarterNet’s core level were filling up with Left-Behinds. Jack, Jazen, and Allegra were backed into a corner with no way out. They had gotten this far by staying mobile, but now they were stationary, and it was only a matter of time before the Rüstov’s numbers overwhelmed them.

“Find the nullifier, Jack,” Jazen said.

“I’m trying,” Jack said, his breathing getting more and more rapid. “It should be right here. I can feel it, but I don’t see it. The only thing I recognize in here is the super-relayer-connector transmitter.”

“The what?” Allegra asked.

“Never mind,” Jazen said. “As long as he knows what that means, I’m happy.” A Left-Behind rushed Jazen and slammed into him like a battering ram. Jazen grunted as he got forced back a few steps, but he spun the Rüstov around and pinned its arm behind its back until Jack heard something break. The Left-Behind cried out, and Jazen kicked it back the way it had come. Allegra shot two arms up the opposite stairwell like spears, sinking them
into the midsection of an approaching Para-Soldier. Still, more of them were coming. They stepped right over their fallen comrades on their way to the core.

Down on the floor of the chamber, Jack could see his friends were in an equally desperate position. Looking over the railing as he scanned the area for the nullifier, he saw Skerren completely surrounded by Left-Behinds. He was swinging away with his swords, but the Rüstov outnumbered him ten to one. Trea was in a similar predicament. Two of her divided selves were standing over an injured third self, fighting Rüstov and trying to hold their ground. It wouldn’t be long before they ended up like Zhi, whose arms were being held from behind by two different Left-Behinds. He was kicking away at the Rüstov in front of him, trying to keep them from getting ahold of his legs, but his chances didn’t look good.

“Jack, hurry!” Allegra said, fighting back more Para-Soldiers at the gateway to the SmarterNet core. She had spread out her body into a shield, trying to block the way in on her side, but the Rüstov were pushing her back. Frantic, Jack kept looking around the SmarterNet’s core for the last nullifier.

“I don’t get it,” Jack said. “The nullifier signal is coming from right here. It should be right in front of us. It should be—”

Jack cut himself off midsentence and looked up at the red info-light laser. “Jazen!” he said, pointing. Jazen understood what Jack was thinking without needing to hear a single word, and he immediately threw his hand into the path of the laser.

“Arrghhh!” Jazen screamed as the red light burned him, but he didn’t pull his arm out. He reached around inside, fighting through the pain. Finally Jack saw him tighten his grip on something inside the beam and pull back, hard. Jazen’s half-melted hand ripped out a tall metal cylinder from the center of the red laser.

“That’s it!” Jack shouted. “That’s the nullifier.”

Jazen crushed the nullifier in his ruined hand. “That
was
the nullifier,” he said.

Jack’s eyebrows perked up as power flooded back into his body like a river of energy. “Outstanding,” he said with a smile. Jack reached out with his powers and froze the joints of every Left-Behind on the mountain with a single thought. He got them just in time.

Down below the core, Skerren, Trea, and Zhi were all left blinking out looks of surprise and relief as the Rüstov fighters attacking them turned into statues. Skerren and Trea both relaxed from the defensive stances they had taken up against blows that were no longer coming, and Zhi squirmed his way out of the grip of his Rüstov captors.

Skerren looked up at Jack with approval and scraped his swords together as he walked around a motionless Left-Behind. The alien invader struggled to move against Jack’s will, but it was no use. The creature was helpless.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” Skerren said, and struck down the Rüstov. Trea and Zhi followed his lead, dismantling the Rüstov forces piece by piece.

A crackle-static noise came out of Jack’s wrist as Stendeval checked in for the last time. “Jack, the Mechas are awake,” he said. “They’re awake and they’re coming over the wall. We’re losing control at the border. I’m sorry, but I can’t wait any longer. I have to act.”

“Don’t!” Jack said. “I’m going to transfer the cure right now. I just need thirty seconds more. It’s right here in Jazen’s head.”

Just then a plume of smoke shot up on the platform,
and Glave appeared next to Jazen. “This head?” he asked, holding a gun to Jazen’s temple. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think you have thirty seconds.”

“No!” Jack said. Obscuro was a fresh host for Glave. He didn’t have enough mechanical parts yet for Jack to freeze in place. Glave smiled and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Now it was Jack’s turn to smile. “I’m sorry, I don’t think you have any idea what I’m capable of when there’s nothing blocking my powers.”

Glave’s face fell. He looked at the useless pistol in his hand and dropped it to the ground. “I’m not going to lie to you,” Jazen told Glave. “This is going to hurt.”

Jazen couldn’t have known how right he was. He grabbed Glave by the head and flipped him over his shoulder, throwing him across the platform to the other side of the SmarterNet core. Glave came down upon a golden sword as Hypnova appeared beneath him, looking tired and bloody but not beaten. Hypnova hoisted Glave up on her steel until she was face-to-face with the Rogue Secreteer. “I hate to do it like this—coming out of nowhere,” Hypnova said. “I really did want to kill you
proper.” Hypnova pulled her sword from Glave’s stomach and pushed him out over the railing. “Oh well,” she said as Glave fell to the ground like a sack of flour.

“There goes your ticket home, Khalix,” Jack muttered under his breath. The Rüstov prince had no answer for him. “Now for the virus,” Jack said, and reached for Jazen. He put one hand on Jazen’s head and one on the SmarterNet’s super-relayer-connector. “All right, SmarterNet. You’re about to become the emergency broadcast system…. This is not a test.”

The SmarterNet’s info-light signal changed from red to green as Jack replaced the virus code with the cure-code. He turned up the power, and the green laser beam burned right through the roof of the SmarterNet core and up through the levels above it. The info-light signal rose up into the night sky, illuminating Mount Nevertop with a brilliant emerald glow.

“Stendeval!” Jack called out after a few seconds. “The cure-code is live. What’s happening down there? Is it working?”