The Secret War (Jack Blank Adventure) (29 page)

Static filled the silent darkness, followed by the voice that Jack dreaded more than any other. It was a voice that sounded not much older than his own. Much like his voice, it had a quality that was aged beyond its years. “Well, well … look who’s back,” the parasite mocked. “After the way you ran off last time, I was afraid you weren’t ever going to speak to me again.”

“Shut up,” Jack said, trying to stay focused. “I’m not here to speak to you. I’m here to study you.”

The parasite laughed, and the volume of the static grew along with its amusement. “Just like last time,” it told Jack, half muffled by white noise. “I hope you find what you need quickly. You don’t have much time left.”

Jack knew better than to take the Rüstov’s bait, but he couldn’t help himself. The parasite had gotten his attention with that remark. “What do you know about how
much time I have?” he asked. “Time before what?”

There was a high-pitched noise, like feedback from a microphone. Jack winced as the sound stung his ears. “Ask … KSCCHHCH … father,” the parasite said between bursts of static.

Now the parasite really had Jack hooked. The Rüstov’s voice in his head was giving him a migraine, but he couldn’t stop talking to it, despite the pain. “What about my father?” Jack asked. “Where is he? What do you know about it?”

The parasite’s sinister laugh rang out again, this time much louder. After thirteen years under Jack’s thumb, it was clearly enjoying the leverage it commanded at the moment. “You’ll find out soon enough,” it told Jack. “It’s inevitable.”

“Nothing’s inevitable,” Jack said. “I’ll fight you. I’m going to keep fighting you.”

“And you’ll lose,” the parasite replied. “I am meant for so much more than this.
We
are meant for more. The moment is nearly upon us. Glave is here now. Destiny cannot be denied.”

“What destiny?” Jack asked, getting fired up. His head
was throbbing now. “There is no destiny! Stop talking in riddles. What’s your plan? What’s going on here?”

Jack’s parasite snickered. “You’ll see,” it replied. “Everyone will see. What we’ve set in motion cannot be stopped by anyone. It’s already too late. You’re going to lose
everything
.” The parasite’s voice trailed off into static. The line went dead. Jack called out after it, but it was like listening to a radio that was tuned in to nothing. The Rüstov bug would say no more. The good news was, the pain in Jack’s head was starting to subside.

Jack took a breath. The dead air helped clear his mind. He was getting distracted again, and he couldn’t let that happen. The Rüstov was playing on his fears, trying to throw him off his game. Jack didn’t have time to think about what the parasite had said. He had to focus on the task at hand. Jack pushed the parasite’s taunts and warnings to the back of his mind and went back to inspecting the elements of his infection that he could see and feel. Jack’s parasite would never voluntarily give him any help, and he didn’t understand their technology well enough to control it by force, but he could still use his powers to look through it. Jack peered deep into the inner workings of
the Rüstov nanobots swimming in his bloodstream. There were millions of tiny little microchips inside of him, each one with its own distinct circuits and unique codes. Jack didn’t run away from them this time. This time he took as long as he needed. He became so focused that it would have been impossible to tell if the parasite had started talking again, because Jack had simply stopped listening. He was in a zone. Eventually he broke off the connection. After he got what he was looking for.

Back in his lab, Jack opened his eyes. He was sweating profusely. Outside, the sun was going down. Several hours had passed in what felt like mere minutes to Jack. He leaped out of his chair and turned on the machines in his lab. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Jack dove back into his work with renewed enthusiasm. He checked what he’d just learned against the data that Trea had left behind. Sure enough, he found a commonality between the prototype’s circuits and the parasite’s operating system almost immediately. Internal scans of the prototype revealed traces of the same Rüstov technology that was nesting inside Jack’s own body. It was layered deep within the prototype’s central processing unit, but
it couldn’t hide from Jack now that he knew what he was looking for. String after string of suspicious code jumped right out at him. Jack could see and hear it running commands on renegade applications inside the prototype.

“Gotcha,” Jack said to himself. He’d found it. He understood what he was looking at now. After all this time he’d finally deciphered the language of the spyware virus.

Wasting no time, Jack fired up his tools and went straight to work attacking the problem. He labored for another three hours without breaking for food or drink. He’d been waiting to do this for more than a year now. This was the fun part. Goggles strapped over his eyes, Jack stared intently through a holo-magnifier as he burned the cure-code onto a microchip in a programming language never before written down anywhere.

The work came along easier than Jack had expected. Trea had already done half the job by creating a program that would deactivate the spyware virus; she’d just needed Jack to identify the malicious code and finish it off. Jack lost himself in his work, trying not to think about how much time he had wasted in getting to this point. The
answer had been right there in front of him all along. He’d just never seen it before now. It was so simple and clear that Jack could hardly believe the virus had given him any trouble at all. Jack felt like he’d been struggling to remember the lyrics to a song, and then suddenly heard it on the radio and every word became clear. Now that Jack had picked up the virus’s tune, its final verse was about to be written.

The finished microchip was a small silver square with the code burned onto it in the shape of a shiny green arrow. Jack took it from a robotic arm beneath the holo-magnifier. After a year of false moves and dead ends, he was holding the cure in his hands. An experimental cure, anyway. Jack wasn’t about to start celebrating just yet. He still had to test it.

Jack sealed his lab door and opened up the coffin. It was time. Jack looked down at the prototype, fully appreciating the gravity of the moment. If it worked, what he was about to do was nothing short of extraordinary. Jack inserted the chip into the prototype’s central processing unit and used his powers to make it run the code. The chip was programmed to tag every inch of the prototype’s
circuits with the cure and scrub its software until it was 100 percent virus free. After the cure-code reinitialized the prototype’s operating system with a clean slate, it would need about ninety minutes to reboot and reload memory. All of this would take place while the prototype was in sleep mode. The moment of truth would come when Jack hit the power button and activated the prototype for the first time in more than a year. Jack looked over at the electromagnetic pulse he’d rigged up in case the cure-code failed. There was nothing left to do now but wait and hope.

After he’d done all he could in the lab, he went up to the roof for some fresh air. He found the
Knightwing
hovering overhead. Jack looked across the roof and saw Midknight and Noteworthy waiting for him.

“Hello, Jack,” the veteran hero said. “We need to talk.”

Jack’s stomach dropped.

“You!” Jack said, his voice apprehensive. “What are you two doing here?”

“Glad to see you, too,” Midknight replied with a smirk. “Sorry to drop by unannounced, Jack. Couldn’t be helped.”

“Don’t apologize, Midknight,” Noteworthy said. “It’s nothing the boy hasn’t already done himself. Isn’t that right, Jack?” he asked. “You seem to have developed a habit of eavesdropping.” Noteworthy shook a finger at
Jack. “Very bad form. Caused us no end of difficulties.”

“Everyone’s looking for you,” Jack said, backing away. “We told the Inner Circle what you were doing at the prison last night.”

“I doubt that,” Noteworthy replied.

“It’s true,” Jack said. “We told Virtua.”

“Really?” Noteworthy asked. “What did you tell her? What exactly do you think we were doing?”

Jack didn’t answer. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what Midknight and Noteworthy had been up to at the prison.

“I think it’s time we put our cards on the table,” Mid-knight said, taking a step toward Jack. He had something in his hand. Jack couldn’t see what it was.

“How did you find me here?” Jack asked. “It’s supposed to be impossible to find someone in Cognito.”

Midknight gave Jack a knowing smile. “‘Impossible’ and ‘supposed to be impossible’ are hardly the same thing,” he replied. “I’m a detective, Jack. I find things out. You know that.”

“Why were you guys trying to break Speedrazor out of jail?” Jack blurted out. His eyes were full of fear. “You
want to put our cards on the table, fine. Let’s put ’em all down. Are you Glave?” Jack asked Noteworthy. “Are you Khalix?” he asked Midknight.

Midknight’s back stiffened, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Am I what?”
he asked, stunned.

“I saw you use your powers last night,” Jack told Noteworthy. “I saw your weapon. The energy glave? Real slick, hiding in plain sight like that. We’re on to you. I’m not the only one, either.”

It appeared that Noteworthy was too appalled by Jack’s accusation to even say anything. Midknight studied Jack’s face to determine if he was serious or not. He stored whatever he had in his left hand away in his utility belt. “Jack …,” he said, shaking his head. “You know better than that.”

Jack looked back at Midknight with a dead stare. “No, I don’t. I haven’t seen your face the whole time I’ve known you, Midknight. Why is that? Are you infected?”

Midknight folded his arms. “Of course not.”

“Show me,” Jack said.

Midknight let out a sigh and reluctantly unfastened the
straps on his helmet. “Even if you’re not willing to take it on faith, with your powers you should be able to tell if there’s a Rüstov parasite inside me. Inside either of us.” Midknight removed his mask and stepped into the light. The only marks on his face were those left by age and combat. There was no Rüstov scar around Midknight’s right eye.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Jack said. “You could still be a collaborator. You both could.”

“Collaborators!” Noteworthy exclaimed. “How dare you?”

“Clarkston, leave it alone,” Midknight said.

“I will not leave it alone,” Noteworthy said. “I didn’t come here to be insulted by some Rüstov-infected boy. Listen here,” he told Jack, “I don’t care who you killed on Wrekzaw Isle last year. There’s far more reason to suspect you than either of us. There always will be, as long as you’ve got that thing inside you.”

“Clarkston, that’s enough,” Midknight said. “You’re not helping the situation.” The old hero turned toward Jack. “Neither are you, Jack. I don’t know what makes it
so hard for you to trust people, but if that doesn’t change sooner or later, you’re going to end up very lonely in life. We’re not infected and we’re not traitors. I thought you and I were friends, even if you did throw quite a monkey wrench into my plans last night. That’s why we’re here now. Because we need your help.”

When Midknight finished talking, Jack officially had no idea what was going on. He didn’t know what Midknight and Noteworthy were doing together, but after seeing the old hero’s face, and listening to him talk, Jack believed him when he said they weren’t in league with the Rüstov.

“All right,” Jack said. “I’m listening. What do you need?”

Midknight nodded. “That’s more like it. C’mere. I’ll show you.”

Midknight went back into his belt and produced the mystery object he’d been holding earlier. It was a small steel box no bigger than a walnut.

“You already know we’ve been working together,” Midknight told Jack.

“It’s an alliance borne out of necessity,” Noteworthy said.

“It is,” Midknight agreed. “A man in his position has access to a lot of information,” he said, jerking a thumb toward Noteworthy. “For the last month he’s been my primary source on Smart’s latest invention.”

“You’re investigating the SmarterNet?” Jack asked. “There’s something shady going on with it, you know.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Noteworthy said, rolling his eyes. “Whatever would we do without you?”

“It’s obviously some kind of surveillance system,” Mid-knight said, scowling at Noteworthy. “But no one knows how it works, and Smart isn’t talking. That bothers me. It’s been my experience that when someone guards a secret this closely, the truth is usually pretty damning. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “That pretty much describes my life for the last year. But what are you doing investigating Smart, with a Rüstov attack less than two days away? You don’t think Smart’s working with them, do you? ’Cause I made that mistake once already.”

“I don’t think Smart’s working with the Rüstov per se,” Midknight replied. “I just worry that in his haste to help himself, he might be helping them more than he knows. His launch timeline and Glave’s attack deadline are too close together,” Midknight explained. “Something is wrong. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise you to find out that ‘the world’s smartest man’ has no idea what he’s doing.”

Jack shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t. And there’s definitely more to the SmarterNet than he’s letting on. This afternoon Obscuro threatened to go public with the truth about the SmarterNet unless Smart gave him the access codes to the system.”

“You saw this happen?” Noteworthy asked. “When?”

“What would Obscuro need with the SmarterNet access codes?” Midknight asked.

“I don’t know, but you should have seen the scare that threat put into Jonas Smart,” Jack said. “I don’t get it. This is Jonas Smart we’re talking about. People already decided against his way of doing things in the last election. They voted him out and shut down the SmartCams because they didn’t like being spied on all the time. Now
everyone’s just taking his word that he won’t do it again? It’s like people have completely forgotten who they’re dealing with. How is someone with his track record getting a free pass on such an obvious question like what his invention actually does? Why are people sitting still while he stonewalls them on that?”