“It appears we’re going to have a panic on our hands after all,” Stendeval said, frowning. “Jonas Smart now has the confirmation he requires. There’ll be no keeping him quiet after this.”
“They both mentioned the same five-day deadline,” Jack said, nodding up at the screens. “Obscuro is worried about the same thing Glave is working on,” he said, connecting the dots as he spoke. “It’s the virus. It has to be.”
Stendeval looked at Jack. “We have to stop it.”
Jack didn’t reply at first. His mind was racing. He thought about how the Rogue Secreteer’s actions were going to spook the city, and shuddered. Then an idea struck him and he realized a potential silver lining to the dark cloud that was Obscuro’s warning. “Maybe we can stop it,” Jack replied. “If we know what he knows, we can. That’s the key, Stendeval. Forget the virus for a second—if we can find Obscuro, we can find Glave. We find Glave … and we shut him down.”
Stendeval shook his head. “That won’t be easy. Every Secreteer in the Imagine Nation will be looking for Obscuro after tonight. They’ll kill him for this betrayal.”
Jack sighed and shook his head. “Then I guess we’d better get moving.”
CHAPTER
7
The Circle of Trust
By the time Jack got back to his apartment, stories about the Rogue Secreteer had already begun to dominate the NewsNets. It didn’t even matter that none of them had any new facts to report. Speculation about Obscuro’s mysterious Rüstov threat was more than enough to keep the coverage going all night long. Jack’s powers being what they were, the media frenzy was tough to avoid. He meant to watch only a little bit but ended up listening to interviews and scanning cyberspace for reactions half the night. Every cybersite on the Net was buzzing with frightened comments. A Secreteer selling secrets was completely unprecedented, a real hero-robs-bank kind of story. Sometime after midnight Jack remembered to call Allegra and ask if she could get Skerren and come by his place first thing in the morning. Fear was gripping the city, and Jack was one of the few people who knew exactly what there was to be afraid of. Membership in that very exclusive club was about to go up by two.
The next day Skerren and Allegra arrived at Jack’s apartment just after breakfast. By that time Jack had been watching the NewsNets for twelve hours straight. He barely said hello to his friends as they came in. He just nodded at them with a vacant look and quickly turned back toward the many holo-screens he had up and running in his living room. The members of the Inner Circle were all putting out statements, each of them addressing Obscuro and his grim predictions for the future. Skerren and Allegra got there just in time to catch the end of Stendeval’s speech:
“I reject as false the idea that the Rüstov have somehow taken our city without so much as firing a single shot,” Stendeval told the people of Cognito. “We are monitoring Rüstov activity inside our borders, just as we have every day since the invasion. The Rogue Secreteer’s actions, and this notion that all hope is lost, run contrary to everything we stand for. Here in the Imagine Nation, we always believe that tomorrow a better day will dawn. Here in the Imagine Nation, we fight for that day. An old English statesman I knew years ago once said that wars are not won by evacuations. I urge all citizens of the Imagine Nation to remain calm and, above all, remain here. We’re going to need one another before this is over.”
“This is unbelievable,” Skerren said, motioning toward the screen. “A Secreteer selling off secrets because he’s afraid of the Rüstov? This didn’t even happen when Revile came back.”
“It’s crazy,” Allegra said. “The launchpads in Galaxis are already backed up with ships full of people who want to follow Obscuro’s advice and get out of here.”
“I know,” Jack said without taking his eyes off the screens. “I’ve been watching. It’s the same in Hightown. Noteworthy tried to downplay Obscuro’s warning, but he got drowned out by SmartNews.” Jonas Smart’s personal NewsNets were running nonstop the Glave transmission he’d intercepted.
Jack flicked his wrist, brushing away the holo-screen with Stendeval on it, and reached out with his other hand to pull another screen forward. He put both hands together and then separated them like he was pulling an invisible string at both ends. The holo-screen expanded to three times its original size, displaying an image of Jonas Smart being interviewed on SmartNews.
“The Rogue Secreteer is a hero,” Smart told Drack Hackman, his NewsNet’s lead anchor. “If not for Obscuro, I would still be bound by the Inner Circle’s order to keep this information classified. Thanks to him, I am free to act—free to give Empire City a fighting chance.”
“But what about those who say this warning comes too late?” Hackman asked Smart. “If even the Secreteers are convinced the Rüstov are going to win, shouldn’t we all be afraid? Clearly, this Secreteer knows something we don’t.”
“Without question,” Smart agreed. “But only for now. There’s no cause for concern as long as the Inner Circle gets out of my way and lets me do what is necessary to protect this city. The do-nothing Inner Circle stopped paying attention to the Rüstov long ago, but as my successor, Clarkston Noteworthy, is fond of saying, I am no longer associated with that venerable institution. For the last year I have diverted a significant amount of SmartCorp resources away from my existing, lucrative enterprises and focused all my time and energy on a device that will tell us exactly what the Rüstov are up to. It’s called the SmarterNet,” Smart announced. “It would have launched already if Jack Blank hadn’t destroyed a key component the night before last, but have no fear. It will launch before the deadline Obscuro warned us about. Once the SmarterNet goes live, the Rüstov will never be able to hide from us again.”
Allegra shook her head. “Amazing how he never misses a chance to get in a dig at you,” she said to Jack.
“He’s been saying stuff like that in every interview,” Jack said. “Right now you’re probably one of about five people who care. Smart’s Instant Polling numbers are way up. Look.” Jack snapped his fingers, and a small data screen appeared. It read:
Jonas Smart, Current Favorability Rating: 65%. (Margin of error: 97%)
Jack grimaced. Yesterday Smart’s posturing would have drawn the ire of Jack’s many supporters throughout the Imagine Nation, but not today. Today people had other things on their minds.
“Jack, you look awful,” Allegra said. “Did you sleep at all last night?”
Distracted, Jack stared at the screens a few more moments before he realized Allegra was talking to him. “What?” he asked. “Oh, yeah. I think so. Yeah, I passed out for a little while there. Definitely.”
“You’ve been watching this all night?” she asked.
Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to, but yeah … I guess I have been. I kind of got sucked in.”
“Maybe it’s time for a break,” Allegra suggested.
Jack’s eyes darted around at the screens and the relentless noise that was coming out of them, passing itself off as news. He looked at Allegra and waved his arm like he was clearing off a table with one clean swipe. The screens all blinked out, and the sudden silence came as a relief. Watching the NewsNets all night hadn’t helped Jack learn anything new; it had served only to stress him out.
“That’s better,” Allegra said.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Yeah, I think so.”
Skerren took a seat on the arm of Jack’s couch. “So?” he asked. “You watched everything the news has to say. What do you think? Is this for real?”
Jack collapsed into his chair and looked up at his friends. “It’s real,” he said. “I know it is. That’s why I asked you guys to come here.” He stopped and took a breath. Jack knew he had to tell his friends what was going on before they could help him, and thanks to Glave and Obscuro, he needed help now more than ever. That didn’t make coming clean any easier. He could guess how his friends were going to react to what came next. “The thing is …,” Jack began, “I kno
w more than just what’s on the news. I know what’s got the Rogue Secreteer so scared.”
Jack’s apartment reached new levels of quiet as Skerren and Allegra stared at him in disbelief. Skerren got up off of the couch. “What?” he asked Jack. “What do you mean, you know?”
Jack put his hands up. “Just … hear me out. I’ll tell you guys everything, but first you have to promise it stays between us. I’m bringing you guys in on this because I need your help, but it has to be your help. You can’t tell anyone else. Not yet.”
“Why not?” Allegra asked.
“Because I’m afraid of how other people might react,” Jack said. “What I’m going to tell you is a secret. You have to promise not to tell anyone else. Trust me, you’ll understand.”
Allegra crossed her arms and gave Jack a slightly annoyed look. “We better,” she said. Jack stared at Allegra, waiting for her to say the words. “Okay, I promise,” she said.
“What about you, Skerren?” Jack asked. “In or out?”
Skerren stood there cracking his knuckles with one hand and studying Jack with suspicious eyes. When he was finished cracking the knuckle on the last finger, he made a fist and stared at it for a brief moment. Eventually he looked up at Jack and nodded. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
Jack figured that was about as positive a response as he could hope for from Skerren. “Not here,” he said to Skerren and Allegra. He pointed at the steps going down to his basement. “Down there. In my lab.”
Jack asked the lights in the basement to turn on as his friends followed him down the steps and into his workshop. The fluorescent bulbs flickered on to reveal a no-frills wreck of a computer lab if ever there was one. It was the exact opposite of the pristine, bright white facilities that Jonas Smart used for his experiments across town in SmartTower. Jack’s cramped, tiny lab looked like an auto-body garage run by the greasiest of grease monkeys. Old computer hardware components were stacked up on boxes and crates that were being used for makeshift workstations. Burned-out hard drives, memory chips, and circuit boards were piled high on shelves until they could fit no more. The lab was as untidy, chaotic, and disorganized as they came.
“Ewww,” Allegra said, scrunching up her face as she looked around Jack’s lab. She frowned at the countless old fast-food containers that looked like they should have been thrown out weeks ago. “This place is disgusting.”
“At best,” Skerren agreed, using one of his swords to flick an old slice of half-eaten pizza across the room into an open garbage can. He picked up a stripped-down Mecha skull as he walked around, checking the place out. “What’s going on, Jack?” he asked. “What is all this?”
“This is what I’ve been working on all year,” Jack said, motioning to the different models of android hands, heads, and more that hung from his ceiling like pots and pans over a kitchen island countertop. Half-assembled Mecha body parts seemed to cover every inch of his lab. “This is my real secret project. But before I tell you about it, I have to tell you how it all started. It’s a long story, but just bear with me. This is going to be kind of hard for me to say.” Jack took another deep breath as Skerren and Allegra leaned in to listen. Here we go, Jack thought, and he opened his mouth to speak.
“You guys already know that last year Jazen Knight and I broke into SmartTower to find out the truth about who I am. What you don’t know is that we didn’t go in there on a hunch,” Jack told his friends. “We had proof. I had proof that Smart knew all about my family and my name. He’d been lying to me from day one. He’d been lying to everyone, all so he could use me to stir up fear about the Rüstov. As long as I was a mystery, I was a potential threat to this city, so that’s what he made me out to be. For a while there it worked pretty well.”
“Hang on, I don’t get it,” Allegra cut in. “Why didn’t you tell anyone about this? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“We didn’t have time,” Jack replied.
“You didn’t have time?” Skerren repeated. He sat down, and Allegra sat next to him. “You had a whole year.”
“I mean back then,” Jack explained. “I convinced Jazen we didn’t have time. It’s complicated. I had proof that Smart knew all about me, but I didn’t know what he knew. I wanted to hack his files before he realized we were on to him. I didn’t want to give him the chance to delete that info before I found out who I was.”
Allegra and Skerren nodded. So far Jack was making sense, it seemed.
“Also, we thought Smart might have been the real Great Collaborator,” Jack added.
Skerren and Allegra sat up in their chairs. Any ideas they’d had about Jack making sense just went out the window.
“Jonas Smart?” Skerren asked, nearly breaking into a laugh at the very idea. “You thought Jonas Smart was the Great Collaborator? Really?”
“How did you figure that?” Allegra asked, dumbfounded.
“Jazen put that part together,” Jack said. “He didn’t have to sell me too hard on the idea, though. It made sense at the time. We thought about how Smart consolidated power after the invasion, and how much he’d gained from getting everyone so riled up about me,” Jack explained. “He was the only one benefiting from any of that. Also, the Rüstov were after me, and we knew that someone on the inside was tipping them off. Smart was one of the only people in Empire City who always knew where I was and when. We figured maybe he was playing both sides against the middle for his own gain.”
“And was he?” Skerren asked.
“No,” Allegra answered for Jack before he even had a chance to speak. “If he was, Jack would have said something about it before now, proof or no proof. Right, Jack?”
Jack nodded grimly. “You’re right,” he said. He was now at the hardest part of the morning’s ugly confession. “It wasn’t Smart tipping off the Rüstov. It was Jazen.”
“What?” Skerren and Allegra blurted out again. This time their outburst was even louder than before.
“It’s not what you think,” Jack said. “There’s a reason it’s taken me up until now to say that sentence out loud. It wasn’t Jazen’s fault. He was infected.”
“Infected?” Skerren asked. “What do you mean? He was a Mecha.”
“The Rüstov have another virus,” Jack said. “A spyware sleeper virus that affects Mechas. It’s undetectable, but it’s real, and Jazen had it. The Rüstov saw everything he saw. They heard everything he heard. That was how they always knew where I was.”
Jack stopped for a moment to try to keep his emotions in check. He didn’t like talking about this, and the look on Skerren’s and Allegra’s faces made it worse. Silence blanketed the room. Jack would have wrapped himself up in it and gone to sleep for a hundred years if such a thing were possible, but it wasn’t.
“What happened to Jazen?” Allegra asked.
“Did you have to kill him because he was infected?” Skerren asked.
Tears welled up behind Jack’s eyes. “No,” he said. “Jazen died just like I said.” Jack swallowed, determined to get through this without crying. “He died saving my life. He wouldn’t even have been there if it hadn’t been for me, and I’m standing here now only because of him. Jazen was stronger than the Rüstov. He beat their virus. He overpowered it and ran two Rüstov Left-Behinds out through the tallest window in SmartTower, and he went down with them just to make sure they didn’t get away.” Jack wiped away teardrops before they escaped his eyes. “I’ve been trying to find a cure for the virus ever since.”
“By yourself?” Skerren asked Jack, more angry than sympathetic. “Who else knows about this?”
“Stendeval,” Jack said.
“Just Stendeval?” Skerren asked.
“What about the rest of the Inner Circle? What about Hovarth?”
Jack shook his head. “Just Stendeval.”
Skerren made an astonished grunt. “You mean all this time, the virus has been out there spreading and you never said anything? How many are infected?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said
. “But it’s probably a lot if Obscuro thinks there’s no way to stop the Rüstov from taking over the city in five days.”
“Four days now,” Skerren corrected Jack.
Jack gave a tired nod. “Four days,” he agreed.
“Where are you on the cure?” Allegra asked. “Are you at least getting close?”
“Yes and no,” Jack said. “I’m working on a cure-code. I have a prototype model to test it on, but it’s not ready yet.” Jack looked away from his friends, over at a dark corner in the rear of his lab. “I thought I’d have this cured by now. I really did, but I …” Jack trailed off. For a second he thought about telling his friends the whole truth. How he’d heard the voice of his parasite waking up the last time he’d worked on the cure. That second came and went. “I’ve hit a wall,” Jack said. “It’s a problem.”
“A problem we need to tell people about,” Skerren said. “I can’t keep this from my king!”
“Skerren, you promised,” Jack said. “You can’t tell anyone. You gave me your word. This secret would tear the city apart.”
“What do you think the infected Mechas are going to do four days from now?” Skerren asked. “And what are we supposed to do to stop them? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m no computer expert.”
“Skerren does have a point,” Allegra said. “What do you expect us to do?”
“Help me find Obscuro,” Jack said. “We need to find the Rogue Secreteer.”
Skerren and Allegra looked at Jack like he’d just told them he wanted to find a raindrop hiding in the ocean.
“You’re out of your mind,” Skerren said.
“Why?” Jack asked. “Why is that so crazy? We can do this.”
“Find a Secreteer?” Skerren replied. “It’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible. We do the impossible every day here.”
“How is finding Obscuro going to help stop the virus?” Allegra asked.
“This guy knows something. About the virus and Glave. If we put whatever he knows together with the work I’ve already done, maybe I can finish the cure-code.” Jack tapped Skerren on the shoulder, ready to drive the point home. “Or if the Rogue Secreteer can lead us to Glave, then we can finish him.”
The Secret War Page 8
