Jack Blank and the End of Infinity (16 page)

“Get off,” Jack said. “Get somewhere safe.”

“Whoa! The train just started moving.”

“I know. I’m moving it.” Jack pulled up and looped back around the city, going all the way past Varagog. Once he passed the Flying Shipyards, he turned around and rocketed back across Empire City, building up speed as he went.

“Jack, what are you doing?” Allegra asked.

“Yes, Jack, what are you doing?” Khalix chimed in.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jack said. He was focused on so many different things at the moment, he couldn’t muster up the mental discipline required to shut Khalix up at the same time.

“I see what this is,” Khalix said after a moment. “It won’t work. The train, those other ships,
this
ship . . . you can’t keep all these balls in the air, Jack. You’re not
that
good.”

Jack smiled to himself. He’d been underestimated his whole life and somehow always managed to prove people wrong. He sped across the city, hoping to keep that streak alive. He darted around skyscrapers and shot beneath MagLev roadways, going faster and faster. He was flying way quicker than anyone could safely go through a busy city that was under attack from hostile invaders. It didn’t matter. After his light speed run across the galaxy, this flight was like a Sunday drive.

Meanwhile, he had already launched the first part of his attack on the Rüstov carrier using every ship he could take control of. It was hard to keep everything straight in his head and make sure the ships didn’t hit friendly targets, but that was helped along by the fact that he wasn’t trying to fly the other ships. He was trying to crash them. Jack was throwing ships at the Rüstov as if they were stones. He fired them into the Shardwings, breaking down the defenses around the carrier and crashing them into the carrier itself. He took out enough Shardwings to clear a path to the carrier and started hitting its hull, but the ships were still tiny compared to the carrier’s massive size. Jack needed to hit the carrier with something heavier. Through the gaps between the buildings he could see the bullet train racing toward Galaxis. It was almost there.

Jack kept pace with the train on its way through Galaxis. It was running up to a broken bridge, but Jack pushed the ship harder and pulled out ahead. “Deploy rescue cable,” he told the ship’s computer, and a cable with a large claw at the end shot out of the back of the ship. “Good thing I picked this ship, huh, Khalix?”

Khalix was silent.

Jack raced down the tracks in front of the train, trailing the cable behind him as he went. He lowered himself right in front of the engine. “This is the tricky part,” he said as the iron claw at the end of the cable grasped at the train. The tips of the claw scraped against the iron hoop of the train’s coupling, just shy of hooking onto it. It was hard because Jack couldn’t slow down. He needed all the speed he could get. “C’mon, latch on. Latch on . . .” The train closed in on the break in the bridge. Just before it reached the severed tracks, Jack heard a loud clack as the claw grabbed hold of the train. “Yes!” he shouted as he pulled the train forward, up off the tracks, and out toward the Rüstov carrier.

Alarms immediately started sounding inside the cockpit. The words “WARNING: MAXIMUM TOW CAPACITY EXCEEDED” flashed on the screen in front of Jack. The ship started to vibrate. It was straining, but it kept going forward, riding the force of its own top speed and the train’s forward momentum. “C’mon, girl . . . I need everything you’ve got.” Jack increased the ship’s power, trying to get close enough to the carrier as he crashed ships into the Rüstov fighters all around. His ship started to rattle hard. He knew
he was pushing it all the way up to its limit and beyond. Red lights started blinking alongside new alarms in the cockpit, and the computer’s voice spoke: “WARNING: ENGINE FAILURE IN NINE SECONDS, EIGHT SECONDS, SEVEN SECONDS . . .”

“I just need four seconds,” Jack said as he pulled the train past the city’s edge. “C’mon, just a little bit longer . . . Release cable!”

The ship’s claw released the train, and Jack pulled up and away as the speeding locomotive went crashing into the center of the Rüstov carrier. The train nearly cleaved the carrier in two, and the resulting explosion finished the job. The added velocity Jack got from releasing the train was the only thing that kept him from being burned to a crisp in the massive conflagration. He shot up into the sky as the broken pieces of the carrier fell into the ocean. The giant ship swirled into the endless maelstrom below the Imagine Nation, dragging thousands of Para-Soldiers to a watery grave. Any remaining Shardwings that were still flying turned tail and flew back to Wrekzaw Isle, spurred on by the sudden reversal of fortune. A mighty cheer rose up from Empire City, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. The
war was far from over, but this battle was going down in the win column. They’d held off the Rüstov . . . for now.

Allegra’s voice came over the radio. “Jack, that was amazing. Looks like that old instinct’s coming back.”

Jack could practically hear a smile in Allegra’s voice. He leaned back in his seat and breathed another sigh of relief. “Fight or flight,” he agreed. “Maybe Roka knew what he was talking about after all.”

“You know you forgot something,” Allegra said.

Jack’s ears perked up. “What’s wrong? What’d I miss?”

“Don’t you know when you do something like that, you have to have a line ready? You have to say something cool, like, ‘Time for you guys to
catch the train
.’”

Jack allowed himself a laugh as he turned his ship back around toward Empire City. “I can do better than that. How about ‘You don’t mess with a hero . . . in
training
.’ Or maybe ‘This is what I call
training hard
.’”

“All right, those are terrible. You’re ruining it.”

Jack laughed again as he made his way back to Galaxis. He was coming in for a landing when three WarHawks flew right into his ship, going in one side and punching out through the other. They left behind a gaping hole
where the engine should have been, and the ship dropped like a stone. Before Jack even had a chance to scream, the ship was caught by more WarHawks, who threw it across Empire City. Just before Jack crashed into the ground, the cockpit filled with a white foam that dried rapidly into a soft cushiony substance and helped him survive a very bumpy landing. When the ship came to a halt, Jack punched his way through the foam and fell out onto the cobblestone streets of Varagog Village. He looked up to find an army of medieval warriors standing over him with their weapons drawn. Jack groaned with frustration and put his hands up in the air.

15

Captured

The next thing Jack knew, he was tied up and hanging upside down on a rail. The crowd hoisted him up and paraded him through the streets of Varagog like a pig on a spit. None of the people there had seen him fighting the Rüstov. They only knew that an enemy attack had just come down from the sky, and so had he. It came as no surprise that they all figured he’d been fighting for the other side.

Hovarth’s subjects took Jack to a vast cobblestone plaza at the center of the village. From his upside-down vantage
point, he saw the massive fortress of Castle Varren come into view. Jack’s captors marched toward a wooden stockade near the drawbridge of the castle. Skerren stopped them.

“Not the stockade,” he said. “Modern technology may not work here in Varagog, but Jack’s powers still do. Use something without any moving parts.” Skerren scanned the plaza. “There.”

Jack craned his neck around and saw that Skerren was pointing at a stone obelisk at the center of the square. Jack grunted as he was tied to the stone pillar with knots that were tight enough to cut off the circulation in both of his hands. “Skerren, this is ridiculous. Where am I gonna go?”

Skerren tugged on the ropes, making sure Jack was bound securely. “I’m not taking any chances with you. Not this time.”

A messenger sprinted through the crowd and ran up to Skerren. “The king approaches.” Skerren nodded, and the people gathered around, calling for Jack’s head. Only the king’s mercy could save him from the executioner’s ax, but Jack knew that Hovarth’s idea of mercy would be to put him down like a rabid dog. He searched the crowd
for someone to help him. There was no one there. No one but Khalix.

“They’re going to kill you, Jack,” the Rüstov prince whispered. “Look around, there’s only one way out of this—me. Do it now, before it’s too late. Join with me. Become Revile!”

“Shut up, Khalix.”

Skerren spun around on Jack with a look that made him wish he hadn’t said that out loud. “Who are you talking to? The Rüstov? What are you telling them?”

“Nothing,” Jack told Skerren. “This is crazy. All of you, there are Rüstov soldiers in the city right now. You need to be fighting them, not me!”

“You say that like there’s a difference between you,” Skerren said.

Jack took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. He wasn’t going to get himself out of this one by losing his temper. “Look, Skerren, you don’t trust me. I get that. But just because I’ve hidden things from you in the past, that doesn’t mean I’m lying now. You can’t just discount everything we’ve been through. I was fighting for the Imagine Nation up there. I want to help. I want to keep fighting!”

Skerren sighed and looked Jack dead in the eyes. “All this time, and you still don’t get it. It doesn’t matter what either of us wants. This isn’t about what you’ve done. It’s about what you are. I didn’t want to kill my parents, either, but that didn’t change the fact that somebody had to.”

“Skerren . . .”

“This is war. We harden our hearts and we do what’s necessary. We sacrifice. It’s the only way the enemy inside you can ever be defeated.”

Jack stared Skerren down. “Stendeval says it’s what’s inside me that’s going to defeat the Rüstov.”

Skerren snorted. “Stendeval is living in a dreamworld. Don’t waste your breath trying to convince me to let you go, Jack. In Varagog, the king decides who lives and who dies, not me.”

The crowd parted, and Hovarth entered the square, followed by Noteworthy and Smart. Skerren and the other people in the square all took a knee and lowered their heads. Hovarth walked toward Jack and made a slight lifting motion with his hands, telling his subjects to rise. He reached the obelisk and looked Jack up and down with weary eyes. Jack could see he was bruised
and bloodied from battle. The look on his face told him Hovarth had lost people during the attack. Jack wondered how many.

“Tell me, Jack, if we had put an end to you yesterday, would it have stopped your people from raining fire down on us today?”

“They’re not my people, Hovarth. I helped stop them just now, same as you.”

“Did you now?” Hovarth looked around at the smoke and fire rising up off Empire City. “From down here, it doesn’t look like you stopped much of anything.”

“He didn’t,” Smart cut in. “The Rüstov have established a command center on Wrekzaw Isle, laid waste to the Galaxis spaceport, and successfully deployed Para-Soldier attack squads into the city. We’ve suffered massive losses.” Smart turned to Noteworthy. “You must be very proud.”

The crowd booed Noteworthy. He stormed up to Smart, stopping mere inches away from his face. “I told you. My son is dead.”

Smart motioned to Jack. “Not yet, he isn’t. You still have time to say good-bye.”

“I am not this boy’s father!” Noteworthy shouted, pointing at Jack.

“Blood doesn’t lie, Clarkston.”

“But you do!” Noteworthy shot back.

The sight of the two men arguing about him made Jack sick. He was well accustomed to people lining up against him, but this was different. Noteworthy acted like being his father was the worst thing anyone could ever have accused him of. Noteworthy’s visceral reaction practically tore a hole in Jack’s stomach. Jack hated to think that this man who wanted nothing to do with him might have been responsible for bringing him into the world. He didn’t want Noteworthy for a father any more than Noteworthy wanted him for a son, but it still hurt to be rejected so vehemently. To be cast aside with no consideration whatsoever. Noteworthy had not said a single word to Jack since Smart broke the news. He was there in the crowd talking
about
Jack, but not once did he address him directly. He hadn’t even made eye contact with him.
That’s how little he thinks of me
, Jack thought. It was plain to see Noteworthy didn’t care a bit about his feelings. He only cared about himself.

“It’s obvious what you’re trying to do here,” Noteworthy
told Smart. “You want to ruin me. It won’t work. In fact, I’m going to put an end to it right now.” His hands lit up with green energy, and he spun like an Olympian throwing a discus. Jack’s eyes widened in terror as a pair of energy glaves sped toward him. He squirmed against the obelisk, but he couldn’t move an inch in either direction. There would be no dodging Noteworthy’s attack. He was dead.

Then Jack felt his body warm up. The heat built quickly until a bright flash of red light erupted out of his chest. Jack’s stomach heaved as the wide beam of energy poured out of the power core in his Rüstov implant. It knocked everyone back a few steps and drowned out Noteworthy’s glaves, vaporizing them. When the light died down, Jack saw that the core had burned away part of his shirt. Other than that he was completely unscathed. He felt like he was going to vomit.

“I can’t hold them off forever,” Khalix told Jack. “I need more firepower. We’re going to have to work together if we want to survive this.”

The entire crowd stared at Jack in silence, blown away by what had just happened. The Rüstov inside him had risen up to defend itself with a weapon that should have been useless in their corner of the city.

“That’s impossible,” Noteworthy said, getting up off the ground. “How did you do that? Machines don’t work here.”

Khalix scoffed. “As if I’m just some
machine
. I’m the son of the Magus. I’m alive. Of course I’m going to protect myself. Tell them, Jack.”

Jack wasn’t listening. He was busy trying to figure out which was worse: the way Khalix had just taken control of his body and used him like a human cannon, or the fact that his own father had just tried to kill him.