Jack Blank and the End of Infinity (26 page)

Jack resolved to deal with his conscience later. Right now he had to save whatever lives he could, starting with his friends’. They didn’t have time to fight through another Para-Soldier battalion. He ignited a pair of pilot lights on the insides of his wrists and pumped aerosol fuel out through tiny holes in the palms of his hands. Giant tentacles of fire leaped from Jack’s arms and lashed out at the grimy Rüstov foot soldiers. He waved his hands back and forth, creating a wall of flames that they couldn’t get through. Each lowly Para-Soldier’s dilapidated machine
parts were covered in grease and flammable liquids. They didn’t dare approach Jack’s fiery blockade. They could shoot through it, but they were shooting blind.

“Skerren, cut through that wall!” Jack shouted, pointing. “We’re getting out of here now.”

Skerren did as he was told and carved a giant circle into the wall on his left. Zhi threw a jump kick at it, and together they made an instant door. A giant piece of the wall went flying into the engine room on the other side. Everybody ran through the opening. Jack went last, still using his flamethrowers to hold back the Rüstov soldiers behind them. There were more Para-Soldiers up ahead, but the odds were much better in the engine room.

“Which way, Jack?” Jazen asked as he threw a hard right cross at an advancing Para-Soldier, dropping it where it stood. The former emissary picked the Para-Soldier up and swung it around like a throwing hammer. When he let go, the lulled Para-Soldier went sailing into the towering column of white-hot energy that powered the ship’s Infinite Warp Core. Jack watched it go. The column rose up three hundred feet into the air. He felt for the Magus.

“Up there,” Jack said.

“Not a problem,” Zhi said as he threw an elbow into a Para-Soldier’s jaw, snapping its neck back. “We’ve got room for my dragons in here.”

Zhi was about to call in his seven flying serpents, but Jack stopped him. He used his powers to grab hold of a team of Rüstov sentries that were flying around the engine room on jet packs. “How about I give you a ride for once, Zhi?”

A minute later, all of Jack’s friends were strapping jet packs onto their backs, even Skerren. “I don’t like this,” Skerren said as Trea helped him get his pack on. “I don’t like using machines.”

“You want your shot at the Magus, don’t you?” Lorem asked. She reached over and hit the button to fire his rockets. “Make an exception.”

Skerren went soaring up into the sky. Jack flew after him and used his powers to straighten out his flight path. Once Skerren got the hang of flying, Jack let him take the reins and go off on his own. Jazen, Lorem, Zhi, and Trea took off after them, and they all flew up alongside the gleaming pillar of energy in the center of the engine room.
Jack led the way, firing round after round from his fusion cannons up at the ceiling. The Magus’s throne room was waiting on the next floor.

As Jack closed in on his target, he could feel Khalix fighting against Smart’s nullifier. The Rüstov prince’s power was rising within him. He didn’t have much time left.
I can do this,
Jack told himself.
Stendeval was right. We can beat them. I know we can. . . .

Jack checked in once more on the battle in Empire City. Revile was flying from borough to borough, helping out wherever he was needed. Down on the ground, Jack saw a legion of armed androids from Machina advancing on the Rüstov and pushing them back. They were moving up the streets in platoons, laying down cover fire for each other and taking back block after block. Glowing projections of Virtua were blinking in and out all over the battlefield, directing them as they fought.

Up in the air, Prime and his men were fighting alongside the Calculan drones and Smart’s WarHawks. Ricochet was there too, bouncing around the sky like a racquetball made out of thermite. Powerful bursts of energy exploded
on every ship she hit. Down in Hero Square, Speedrazor rushed through the crowd, cutting Rüstov Para-Soldiers to ribbons. He had reunited with a few other former Peacemakers. Battlecry, Flex, Harrier, and Surge fought with him. Villains like Backstab, Pain, Arsenal, and Fugazi were there, too. Everyone was fighting the Rüstov, even the Secreteers. Jack saw bursts of black smoke firing up out of the ground, behind monuments, and up in the air. With every cloud of smoke that appeared, a hooded Secreteer sprang out and struck a Para-Soldier, then vanished before the mists even started to fade. The Mysterrii were right there with them, flipping all around the square and stabbing at the Rüstov with little knives.

Jack’s spirits were lifted by the courage of the people down below. He had to come through for them. He had to finish this. All the while he fought the Rüstov, he studied his own techno-organic makeup. He was almost there. Jack blasted through the roof of the engine room and into the grand hallway outside the Magus’s throne room. The way inside was blocked by a regiment of armored guards . . . and a friend.

“Allegra?” Jack said. He knew she wasn’t in control of her body, but she still looked exactly like herself. Seeing Allegra guarding the Magus’s door stopped Jack’s heart cold. While he was distracted, the imperial guard filled the air with cluster bombs. They blanketed the hall with explosions before Jack could lift a finger to stop them.

Shrapnel stabbed Jack like a million tiny daggers. He couldn’t be permanently harmed by such an attack, but his friends were another story. He heard them scream as the bombs went off throughout the hall. When the dust settled, Jack scanned his friends for vital signs. Jazen’s and Skerren’s injuries were minor, but Lorem Ipsum, Trea, and Zhi were seriously wounded. He could hear the footsteps of the imperial guards coming down the hall to kill them. Jack put himself back together and got up angrily. He had seen too many good people hurt by the Rüstov for one day. This was where it stopped.

“Stay down,” Jack told Jazen and Skerren. He shot out a hand, and the imperial guards running toward him froze in place. He made a fist, and their knees folded over in the wrong direction. Jack locked a plasma cannon on the next row of guards and fired. They tried to
fire back, but he wouldn’t let them. He rose up into the air, holding his hands out in front of him. They glowed with lines of energy that ran out in circuit-like patterns. More Rüstov guards ran into the hall shooting at Jack, then suddenly stopped and shot each other instead. Their bombs blew up while still in their hands. Their weapons misfired. Jack moved slowly toward the throne room entrance, taking the Magus’s guards apart piece by piece as he went.

The Rüstov Allegra ran inside and locked the door behind her, leaving her men to face Jack alone. They didn’t stand a chance. Jack was learning more and more about how the Rüstov worked. The harder he fought, the more things he discovered. The more he discovered, the more weaknesses he found to exploit. There were so many things he could do to them. Knowledge was power, and the battlefield had turned into Jack’s classroom. He reached the throne room door. A few inches of iron was all that separated him from the Magus. Jack knew the Rüstov emperor didn’t fear him. To the Magus, he was nothing more than a puppet for his son to control. The Magus had worked hard to make Jack accept that fate. He
thought he could break him. The Magus tried to teach him the Rüstov way of life. He didn’t realize Jack had been studying how to be a hero ever since he opened his first comic book.

His final test was about to begin.

24

The Sacrifice

Jack used his powers to open up the throne room doors. They quietly slid apart to reveal the Magus sitting in his throne on the far side of the room. Glave was on one side of him and the infected Allegra on the other. Other than that, the room was empty. The Magus appeared relaxed. He and his minions were quiet and still, waiting for Jack as if on display. Jack could see what they were doing. It was more psychological warfare. The Rüstov were hiding behind the faces of his friends and loved ones, taking full advantage of his feelings for them. It was standard
operating procedure for the Rüstov; Jack knew it all too well. That didn’t make it any less effective. Jack steeled his nerves and walked inside, leaving Skerren and Jazen in the hall to tend to their wounded friends.

It was calm inside the throne room. Outside the ship, Jack could hear the muffled sounds of bullets and laser blasts firing without pause. In the air over the city, Valorian Guardsmen, Calculan drones, and WarHawk troopers blew up ship after Rüstov ship. Down on the ground, heroes and villains were pushing the Rüstov back, but this battle, here in this room . . . this was the key. This was where the war would truly be won or lost.

“You’ve got determination. I’ll grant you that,” said the Magus. “This has gone on far longer than I expected.”

Jack swallowed hard, trying his best to keep up a brave front. “I warned you what would happen if you didn’t pack up and leave. I’ll give you one last chance to get out of here before we finish you.” Jack hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. He could only hope Smart’s nullifier would hide Khalix’s presence from the Magus long enough for Jack to do what he came to do. In an ideal world, he wouldn’t have forced a confrontation with
the Magus until he was absolutely sure how to play his trump card and break Stendeval free of his control. He didn’t have the luxury of going the ideal route. Nothing about Jack’s situation had ever remotely resembled ideal. He could feel Khalix inside his mind, fighting to make his voice heard. The nullifier was holding out, but this close to his father, the Rüstov prince was at his strongest.

The Magus got up and flexed the winglike spikes on his back. “Still haven’t learned to hold your tongue, I see.” He shook his finger at Jack like he was a child that needed to be punished. “Kill his friends.”

Glave and the Rüstov Allegra stepped down and left their emperor’s side. Jack raised his weapons toward them, but that was just his reflexes kicking in. He couldn’t fire on Roka and Allegra. It didn’t matter how many Rüstov he’d taken down up to that point. These two were using his friends as their hosts. They walked past Jack unmolested. Out in the hall, Skerren and Jazen stood up and got ready to fight.

“Which one do you want?” Skerren asked Jazen.

Jazen shook his head. “Neither, not that it matters. I’ll take Roka.”

Skerren spun his swords and settled into a fighting stance as the infected Allegra closed in on him. “Jack, you have to let me know if you’re in trouble. You know what I mean. If you’re running out of time, I’m trusting you to say so.”

Jack put up a hand. “I know, Skerren. Don’t say anything else. Just hold out as long as you can, all right?”

“Right,” Skerren said, ducking down as a razor-sharp liquid metal arm shot past his ear. “Easier said than done. Holding out means holding back while she tries to kill me.”

“Just do your best, both of you,” Jack said. “It’s always been enough before.”

“True,” Jazen said as Glave went at him holding a pair of ion blades that glowed with deadly radiation. “Trouble is, Allegra’s and Roka’s best have always been pretty good too.” Jack kept trying to figure out how to extricate his infected friends from their parasites, but it was hard to concentrate with the Magus right there. The fact that he was using Stendeval’s body made it even worse.

The Magus got up off his throne. “You’ve been a worthy adversary, boy, but you’ve taken things as far as they can go. This only ends one way.” The Magus walked up to
Jack and stopped less than two inches from his face. Seeing the look of an enemy in Stendeval’s eyes was positively gut-wrenching for Jack. Talking to him on the holo-screen was bad enough, but being face-to-face with him was infinitely worse.

“Do you really think you’ve accomplished something here?” the Magus asked in a voice still partly Stendeval’s. He motioned to the window and the battle raging outside. “That’s nothing. Less than nothing. The losses out there don’t concern me. The only thing that concerns me is my son.” The Magus waved a hand, and Stendeval’s trademark red energy particles spiraled out of his fingers. A chill ran down Jack’s spine. The Magus wielding Stendeval’s power was a nightmare made real. He could do almost anything now. The Rüstov emperor rubbed his fingers together and smiled. “This host body is truly something. So much potential.”

The Magus pointed at Jack, and jagged, deep-crimson versions of Stendeval’s superpowered energies shot down from the sky like lightning. The bolts blew a hole in the roof of the throne room and struck Jack down. He felt pain like he’d never felt before. Electric fireballs lodged
in his body, bouncing around inside of him like trapped animals trying to claw their way out. Jack screamed as the red lightning burst from his chest and shot out in twelve different directions. The second it was gone, another bolt dropped out of the sky and hit him again. His body was burning and his teeth crackled with bloodred electricity. Jack was on the verge of passing out when the Magus halted his attack.

“Now. I’m going to give you one last chance to let me speak to my son.”

Jack propped himself up on all fours and spit on the ground. His saliva tasted like motor oil in his mouth. He wiped his lip and gave the Magus a defiant stare. “I told you. Khalix is gone. He’s not coming back.” It was a blatant lie. Khalix was pounding on the door of his subconscious at that very moment, but the Magus didn’t need to know that.

The Magus’s eyes narrowed into thin slits. Jack could tell he was seething, but he didn’t act on his anger just yet. Instead, he put his hand on the back of Jack’s head and spoke softly. “Khalix. I know you’re in there. If you can hear me, say something.”

The Magus’s hands glowed with red energy, and once
again, Jack spoke in Khalix’s voice. “Father . . . is that you?”

The Magus’s eyes widened, eager for more. “I’m here, Khalix. Talk to me.”

Jack’s eyes were shut tight. “Father, I need . . .” Jack trailed off, straining to keep the words in. “I need you to—”

“Yes? Tell me!”

Jack stood up. “I need you to get this through your thick skull . . . Khalix doesn’t live here anymore.” The muscles in his face relaxed into a cocky grin. “You blew it, Magus. Khalix is over. He’s done.”