The Secret War (Jack Blank Adventure) (36 page)

“
I’m
not going to make it happen,” Glave said, gnashing his teeth. “He will,” he added, pointing at Jack.

Jack scrambled to his feet as Hypnova charged into Glave once again. He’d worry about them later. A few feet away a Left-Behind with a sword sticking out of its chest was headed for him. Two more Para-Soldiers were right behind it. As the Rüstov advanced on his position, Jack backed up to the ledge of the SmarterNet, with the last nullifier directly above him. Just like the other one, it was out of his reach.

The Left-Behinds closed in, and Jack took a step back. There was nothing behind him to step on. He dropped off the top of the SmarterNet, catching the roof with his fingers to keep from falling all the way down. Almost immediately he let go and dropped down again, this time catching himself at the next level. His bag caught on a piece of the SmarterNet, so Jack threw it off his shoulder. It fell away and landed on the ground, empty. Jack’s last
explosive charge wasn’t in the bag anymore. It was right where he had left it—crammed into the wiring on the back of the Left-Behind he’d stabbed in the chest. Jack had set the explosive on a delay to avoid getting blown up himself, and it just so happened that the Left-Behind carrying it was standing right below the last nullifier.

The explosion on the roof was just big enough to take out the three Left-Behinds and the pole supporting the final nullifier. The blast also had enough kick to shake Jack loose from the side of the SmarterNet.

The pole with the nullifier fell down to the floor of the chamber, and Jack was right behind it. He bounced off the fire-escape-style ramps on the side of the machine and hit the ground hard. Jack rolled over and let out a groan. Everything hurt, but he didn’t have the option of staying down until he felt better. At the moment, the Left-Behinds were all still inside the SmarterNet, and Jack knew that moment wouldn’t last. He had to finish this before it passed altogether.

Jack no longer had his sword or any backup. Hypnova and the Mysterrii were all otherwise engaged with the enemy. He had to go it alone. Jack had no idea where the
last nullifier had landed, but he could track it down using his powers, or lack thereof. He still couldn’t access his machine-controlling abilities, but he did feel a fuzzy connection to them with three of the four nullifiers gone. Jack could feel where the dead zone canceling out his powers was coming from. He was in the back of the chamber, with the SmarterNet in front of him. The power-draining signal was coming toward him. The nullifier had to be out there in front of him, somewhere right in front of his face. He threw away his goggles and got up to look. Less than a minute later, he saw it. The nullifier was halfway up the wall, precariously balanced on a rock ledge on the side of the cavern. Jack grabbed some wall and started climbing. As he went up, the Left-Behinds started jumping off the sides of the SmarterNet and pouring out of its access ramps. Jack tapped his wrist to get an update on Allegra’s status. “Allegra, where are you guys? Close, I hope?”

Much to Jack’s surprise, someone else answered the call. “I’m afraid I’m not privy to Allegra’s whereabouts at present,” Stendeval said.

“Stendeval?” Jack asked. “Is that you? What’s going on?”

“It’s all right, Jack,” Stendeval said. “Allegra gave me her bracelet so we could be in direct contact once she arrives at Mount Nevertop. Unfortunately, I can’t join you in this fight. I have to conserve energy for the EMP, if necessary.”

“Stendeval, you don’t need to blast the EMP into Machina when the Mechas reboot,” Jack said, climbing. “We have a chance. I have the cure.”

“An experimental cure,” Stendeval said.

“I have a good feeling about this one,” Jack said. “I don’t know if it will work, but there’s a chance. A good chance.”

“There is also less than ten minutes’ time before the Mechas wake up. Innocent lives are at stake on both sides of the Machina-Hightown border, Jack. This isn’t just my decision to make. I gave Virtua my word that I wouldn’t let the Rüstov use her people against the Imagine Nation again.”

“You have to give us time,” Jack said, looking below him to find several Left-Behinds gathering at the base of the rock wall. “Promise you’ll give me the chance to fix this.”

“Like you promised me you’d stay in Cognito?”
Stendeval asked. Jack didn’t say anything. “I will do what I can. That is all I can ever promise anyone.”

Jack frowned. “That’ll have to do. I’ll check back with an update as soon as I can. Wish me luck.”

Jack continued to climb, and the Left-Behinds followed him up the wall. He picked up the pace until he heard a scream on the roof of the SmarterNet behind him. He paused to get a look at what was going on, unable to tell if the cry had come from Hypnova or Glave. Jack watched as a stream of smoke went flying off the top of Smart’s machine and crashed into the floor of the chamber. A black cloud spread out at the point of impact, and Jack hoped it would be Hypnova who would be revealed as the victor when it lifted. No such luck. The smoke dissipated, and Jack saw that Glave was the one left standing. The Rüstov agent looked up at Jack, and then at what Jack was after.

“No …,” Glave said, and burst into a cloud of smoke. A trail of black smoke fired up across the chamber like exhaust from a rocket, headed toward the ledge with the nullifier. Jack’s head spun back around, and he made a frenzied last push to beat it there. He was almost upon it. He kicked down at Left-Behinds below him as they clawed
at his heels, and pulled himself up onto the ledge, his objective just a few feet away. The second he got there, Glave materialized in front of him and grabbed the pole with the nullifier at the end. He held it with both hands like a staff, and Jack leaped for him, grabbing the pole and trying to wrest it from his hands. They both went tumbling down the wall, rolling toward the cliff-side edge of the cavern. Jack didn’t think twice about the danger involved. Falling off the mountain was the least of his worries. If Glave was able to keep the nullifier away from him, it was all over anyway.

“Jack …,” Glave grunted, struggling with Jack on the floor of the cavern. “Stop … you’re going to—urkk!”

Glave shut up as Jack kicked him in the face. Jack had gotten turned around in the fall and was able to hold on to the pole with one hand, with his feet pressed up against Glave’s chest. He planted one foot on Glave’s shoulder and kept right on kicking with the other. After enough kicks the pole slipped from Glave’s fingers and Jack went flying backward too fast to stop himself.

“NO!” Glave shouted as Jack’s momentum carried him out and over the side of the cliff.

Jack didn’t scream. He was too scared to even breathe. He felt every ounce of oxygen leave his body, and the world slowed to a crawl as he fell. It was like someone had hit the pause button and he was having an out-of-body experience watching himself slip away … watching as the ledge pulled back from him … but that wasn’t right. The mountain wasn’t moving.
He
was. Jack was falling out into the night, completely helpless, and the second that realization hit, the world sped back up, spinning out of control.

Jack screamed as the fear rose in him, stampeding through every inch of his body. He saw the nullifier falling alongside him. He hadn’t even realized he’d let it go. His mind was everywhere. Jack heard Stendeval calling out from his wrist communicator.

“Jack? Jack!” Stendeval cried. “What’s going on?”

Jack heard Khalix screaming in his head. He was in no shape to shut him out, not while he was falling to his death. Jack took a breath and screamed again, his arms and legs flailing as he raced toward the ground. Then a stream of glowing light rushed past him. And then another. Then he was caught.

“Gotcha!” a voice in the night called out as a hand clamped down hard on Jack’s wrist. Jack’s stomach jumped into his throat as he reversed course with a jerk and started going back up.

“Wha?” Jack mumbled in a dumbfounded daze as he tried to figure out what was happening. Above him he saw Zhi’s glowing dragons flying up through the night sky. Jack’s mind was racing. He wasn’t dead. He was caught. Caught! By a dragon rider!

Jack looked down as a blue dragon came up below him, and he saw Allegra riding it. She’d made it. And she’d brought the cavalry. Jack drew focus on the dragons above him and saw Skerren, Trea, and Zhi. They were all there.

“Allegra!” Jack shouted, half laughing, half tearing up with relief. “You made it! Oh, man, I can’t … thank you! Thank you so much!” he said, still getting over the shock of it all. “Did it work?” he asked. “Did you get it? Did you get—”

“The prototype?” asked the man holding on to Jack. “Yeah, they did.” Jack was pulled up and set down on the dragon. “Rebuilt and better than ever, thanks to you.”

Jack knew who it was before he even saw his face. Even so, he still said, “Holy cow…. I don’t believe it.”

“If that were true, I wouldn’t be here,” the prototype replied.

Jack shook his head and smiled. This time his eyes couldn’t hold back the tears welling up inside them. “Am I glad to see you, Jazen. You have no idea.”

Emissary Jazen Knight, also known as the virus-free prototype, pulled his dragon up to join the others that were hovering in the air above him. He and Jack’s fellow students parked their flying beasts in the clouds across from the mouth of the cavern housing the SmarterNet, just out of the Rüstov’s firing range. They came to a stop, and Jack stared at his friend, his mouth agape. Jazen’s presence there was his doing, but Jack still couldn’t believe his eyes. Jazen Knight, the person who had brought him to the Imagine Nation and had died saving him from the
Rüstov last year … He was right there in front of him. He was back.

“The cure …,” Jack said. “It worked. You’re here.”

Jazen smiled. “I’m here. I don’t know how you did it, but you brought me back, Jack. You saved my life.”

“Yeah, well … I owed you. You saved my life plenty of times. Just now, for instance.”

“Eh,” Jazen said, waving his hand. “Who’s counting?” Jazen opened his arms wide and hugged Jack. Jack wrapped his arms around Jazen’s back and held on tight. He held on as if he would have fallen down into the darkness if he’d dared to loosen his grip even the tiniest little bit. For a kid who’d never known any family, Jack felt like he’d just gotten his big brother back. When he finally let go of Jazen, he wiped his eyes and looked at the other dragons that were circling around him. His fellow students—
his friends
—were all there.

“You came,” Jack said. “You all came. Thank you.”

“We didn’t come for you, Jack,” Skerren replied. “We came because we were needed.”

Jack swallowed hard and looked at Skerren. “Maybe. But I was the one who needed you. So thanks either way.”

“What’s the situation here, Jack?” Allegra asked.

“Where’s the SmarterNet?” Trea wanted to know. “Allegra said you found it.”

“It’s in there,” Jack said, pointing at the giant hole carved into the side of Mount Nevertop. “You can’t see it from out here. It’s cloaked. The SmarterNet is broadcasting on a global frequency,” Jack told the group. “It’s sending the spyware virus out all over the world. We have to transfer the cure-code from Jazen’s system into the SmarterNet’s mainframe and send out our own signal. Otherwise the Rüstov are going to control every machine on Earth, and every Mecha in Empire City is going to die.”

Jack’s classmates contemplated the enemy forces that had gathered at Mount Nevertop. Glave and the Rüstov fighters were all lined up on the ledge, watching as Jack and his friends formulated their game plan from a safe distance.

“Unless we stop them,” Jazen said.

“Can we do that?” Zhi asked. “Can we transfer the code?”

“Jack can,” Allegra said.

“Right, I can …,” Jack started to say, and then he trailed off, turning toward the mountain with a startled look. “No,” he said, frowning. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“What are you talking about?” Skerren asked.

Jack didn’t say anything right away. He just stared at the mountain. Jack couldn’t believe it, but something was still blocking his ability to speak to the machines in the crystal cavern. The last nullifier from the roof had fallen down off the mountain, far out of reach, but Jack’s powers still weren’t fully back.

“There’s one more nullifier in there,” Jack said.

“Nullifier?” Jazen asked. “You mean Smart’s power drainers?”

“Yeah. He uses them everywhere now,” Jack said, squinting at the cloaked SmarterNet. His powers had risen against the weakened nullifier zone enough for him to feel out the details of Smart’s machine. Enough to almost see it, even while cloaked, but not enough to control it. The dead zone blocking his powers was still there in front of him, but it was more focused now. Jack could feel with pinpoint certainty where the last nullifier was. “It’s there inside the SmarterNet,” Jack said. “In its core.
We have to take it out before I can feed the cure-code into the system. I need you guys to keep Glave and the Left-Behinds off my back long enough for me to get to it.”

“Glave?” Trea asked. “He’s here too?”

“He’s here, all right,” Jack said. “He’s the Rogue Secreteer.”

“What?” Allegra exclaimed, nearly losing control of her dragon. The creature roared as it bumped into the other flying serpents, and Zhi tried to steady it.

“I don’t understand,” Zhi said. “Glave is the rogue? How?”

“Jack, that can’t be …,” Trea said.

“It’s true,” Jack replied. “He’s infected. Obscuro is Glave’s host. The whole thing with him was just a Rüstov plan to turn us against one another so they could spread their virus … and so they could get their hands on me.”

“Why go through all that? Why do they want you so bad?” Skerren asked, scowling at Jack. “I want an answer. Before we go in, I want the truth.”

Jack took a deep breath and looked at Skerren. “They want me because I’m next in line for the Rüstov throne.” Skerren’s eyes grew wide in shock. “It’s true,” Jack told his
friends. “I’m the heir to the empire. The Rüstov prince is right in here,” he said, tapping his chest. “They think I’m going to win the war for them.”