The Secret War

by Matt Myklusch

  Skerren turned toward Allegra. “Done what?” he asked. “Figure out which way to go?”

  “No, cut into that tree,” Allegra said. “We learned about this place in our Imaginature class, remember?”

  Skerren scrunched his eyebrows and chewed his lower lip like he was trying to recall the lesson. Jack helped him out. “This forest wasn’t always here,” Jack said. “It grew up over old burial grounds. It’s sacred.” Jack motioned at the severed treetop. “You don’t treat sacred ground like that.”

  A thorny vine crept across the ground and wrapped itself around Skerren’s ankle.

  “Not unless you want to deal with the Gravens—,” Allegra said, pointing at the slithering vegetation, her eyes wide. The vine jerked Skerren off his feet and started dragging him across the ground.

  “Og’s blood!” Skerren called out. “It’s alive!”

  Allegra and Jack ran over to Skerren and grabbed him tightly underneath his arms, giving him time to cut himself free.

  The severed vine snapped loose like a broken rubber band, shooting backward. The vine sank into the earth like a snake’s tongue retracting into its mouth after a long hiss. The ground bulged at the spot where the vine had disappeared. A little mound of dirt started rising up there and very quickly turned into a big mound of dirt. Something was coming out of the ground. Jack looked down and saw more earth cracking and crumbling all around him. Everywhere he looked, roots and rocks were bursting up from below. Something down beneath the earth was digging itself out—a lot of somethings, by the looks of it.

  “Here we go,” Skerren said. “Get ready. Back-to-back formation.”

  “Hey, look who cares about strategy all of a sudden,” Jack said.

  “Not now, guys …,” Allegra told them both.

  Jack took a deep breath as scores of dark, dirty creatures pulled themselves up out of the ground, surrounding him and his friends. The first one out opened its mouth and moaned. The air blowing through the mud in its gaping maw sounded like a sick person wheezing through mucus. It wasn’t a person at all. The Gravens weren’t subterranean monsters pulling themselves up from underground. They were the underground itself, rising up in the form of people. They looked like ecological zombies, made up of roots, moss, and muddy earth. Some had vines for arms, and some had hands made of soil and clay. None of them had eyes. They just had deep pockets burrowed into the dirt where their eyes should have been. Each one was at least six feet tall, and they towered over the children as they trudged forward, step by muddy step.

  “Jack, keep behind us,” Allegra said. “Your powers won’t work out here.”

  “I can handle myself,” Jack said. “It’s like Chi said, if your powers desert you, you still have yourself to rely on, right? I planned ahead this time around.” Jack dug into his bag, looking for something specific. “Here we are,” he said. Jack took out a pair of heavy metal gloves and slipped them on.

  “What’s that?” Skerren asked.

  “Just a little something I’ve been working on,” Jack replied. “Nuclear Knuckles.” Jack punched his hands together and the gloves started heating up. His hands lit up with energy as the gloves emitted a sizzling yellow glow. “Check it out,” Jack said as he waved his hand over the ground at his feet. The earth ruptured beneath his palm as if he’d dragged a spike through the dirt, even though he hadn’t even touched it.

  “Whoa,” Allegra said.

  Just then a Graven wrapped a vine around Jack’s waist and pulled him close. Jack closed his eyes and swung as hard as he could, his gloved fist hitting the Graven square in the chest. Mud splattered everywhere, and the vine’s grip on him loosened instantly. Jack opened his eyes and saw that all that remained of the Graven was a pair of legs. He had knocked off the Graven’s entire upper body.

  “Nice!” Jack said. The Graven’s legs collapsed into a heap of mud on the ground before him. “I’ve been looking for something I could really hit with these things,” he told Skerren and Allegra. “Only so much you can do in the lab, you know?”

  “You can do as much as you want out here,” Skerren said. “Here they come!”

  A wave of fresh Gravens closed in on them from every angle, and Jack, Skerren, and Allegra lashed out, pushing them back.

  Skerren spun his swords in his hands and sprang forth, slicing Gravens in half with big, sweeping cuts. Allegra morphed her fists into sledgehammers and started splattering the Gravens with hard hits. Fighting with their backs to one another offered Jack and his friends the most protection possible against the green monsters, but they were greatly outnumbered. Allegra had just reduced one of the Gravens to a pile of moss, dirt, and rocks when another one broke through the circle and came at her from behind.

  “Allegra, look out!” Jack shouted as a thick, muddy arm with roots running through it like veins wrapped itself around Allegra’s neck. The Graven pulled Allegra down to the forest floor, where hands grew out of the ground and started tugging on her body. Jack and Skerren were too busy fighting their own battles to get to her, but Allegra liquefied, turning herself into a flowing stream of silver that ran through the Gravens’ grimy fingers like water. She reformulated behind the Graven with a hand shaped like a large ax.

  “It … it was trying to pull me under!” Allegra shouted with a little hitch in her voice. She threw her arm down and chopped her attacker in half. “Don’t let them get too close to you!” She made her other hand into an ax and stepped away from the circle, spinning around with her arms extended, carving out some breathing room.

  Allegra’s move cleared up space on Jack’s left flank, but more Gravens poured in on his right. Jack clapped his hands together, sending a shock wave into the midsection of the Graven in front of him. Mud and pebbles splattered everywhere. Jack pressed his forehead into his shoulder to wipe his brow and kept right on throwing punches and thunderclaps. Thanks to his Nuclear Knuckles, the Gravens went down easily, but there were so many of them. Jack was getting out of breath, and the Gravens were still coming by the dozen.

  Hands grew out of the earth to grab at Jack’s ankles. One of them got ahold of him and pulled his foot underground. He was in up to his shin before he was able to swat the Graven hands away with his energized fists. He and his friends couldn’t keep this up forever. They were holding their ground for now, but it wouldn’t be long before the ground was holding them—for good. There was an endless supply of Gravens … and they were getting smarter.

  Jack was pounding Gravens left and right when a few of them teamed up and joined their bodies together to form a giant super-Graven. The creature rushed at Jack, and he swung. Mud sloshed over his hand as it got stuck in the super-Graven’s stomach. The mossy muck bubbled around the energy from Jack’s Nuclear Knuckles, but the super-Graven stood there and took it. It grunted out a terrible laugh that smelled like pollution and sounded phlegmy. The creature jumped back, and there was an ominous slorping sound as it pulled the metal glove off Jack’s hand. Jack’s eyes bugged out as he looked at his bare hand, then up at Skerren and Allegra. More super-Gravens were coming.

  Skerren’s jaw hit the floor. “Fall back!” he shouted. He sliced out a clear path in the woods behind him and pointed with a muddy sword. “Go! Now!” Jack and Allegra ran through the clearing Skerren had just made, and he followed. They ran through the forest as fast as they could, desperate to put some distance between them and the Gravens. Ahead they spotted a rocky outcropping and sprinted to the top, hoping that the Gravens couldn’t come up through stone.

  “These things are tougher than I thought,” Jack said once they’d stopped running.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Skerren said.

  “Which way?” Allegra asked, pushing aside some shrubs on the top of the rock and looking as deep into the forest as she could. “I can’t see anything out here.” The mist was blocking the view in every direction.

  Skerren and Jack looked around too. The only thing thicker than the fog in the forest was the forest itself. Grav
enmurk Glen was overrun with a thorny under-growth of small trees and bushes.

  “I don’t know …,” Skerren said, thinking. “This way!” he decided, and started down the other side of the rock.

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said. “We can’t just pick a direction and go. Who knows where we’ll end up?”

  Skerren scowled at Jack. “What do you suggest we do? Stay here?” The wind carried gurgling moans through the air. The Gravens were coming.

  “I just don’t want us to make the situation any worse than it already is,” Jack said. “We can’t go running off half-cocked.”

  “A little late for that, don’t you think?” Skerren asked. “You’re the one who pushed us onto that ship without a plan.”

  “Don’t put this on me, Skerren,” Jack said. “I’m not the one who invited the Gravens to this party.”

  “Both of you, stop it!” Allegra said, getting in between Jack and Skerren before things escalated any further. The Gravens were at the base of the rock. They didn’t have time to argue. “Listen,” Allegra said, putting up a finger. “You hear that?”

  Jack and Skerren both shut their mouths. After a few seconds Jack heard the sound of running water. “The river,” he said.

  “It flows into the sea on the northern border, right?” Allegra asked. “Hypnova’s ship is north of where we are …” She trailed off, waiting for the boys to put it all together.

  “We follow that sound to the river, and we follow the river to Hypnova’s ship,” Skerren said, finishing Allegra’s thought.

  “And we let the river take care of the Gravens,” Jack added.

  Allegra nodded with enthusiasm. “We use our environment to fight our environment.”

  “Now, that’s strategy,” Jack said, giving Skerren a light shove on the shoulder.

  Skerren didn’t smile. Allegra did. “We better get moving,” she said.

  Jack, Skerren, and Allegra struck off in what appeared to be the direction of the river. It wasn’t easy getting there. They had the sound of running water to lead them and Skerren’s swords to cut a path through the dense thicket, but the forest fought them tooth and nail (or, more accurately, thorn and smog) the whole way. The eerie luminescent haze that filled the forest got thicker and more opaque with every step they took. It seemed to be hugging the trees, pooling up around their trunks, and purposely obscuring prickly briar patches filled with spiky barbs, slowing them down. That was something they could ill afford, as the Gravens didn’t let up. They dogged the children’s steps with a vengeance and were almost upon them when Jack, Skerren, and Allegra broke through a thorn bush and discovered that there was nothing on the other side but air.

  They fell straight down into the river, narrowly escaping the grasp of two super-Gravens who were right behind them. Jack plunged deep into the water, and when he came up for air, one of the Gravens who had fallen in behind him was clutching at his shoulders. Jack screamed as another Graven’s vinelike arms wrapped around his legs and pulled him under the water, but the grip wasn’t strong. Not like before. Jack kicked his way free and looked below him. Through the darkness he could make out the sight of the Graven dissolving into a floating pool of moss, weeds, and mud. When Jack came up for air a second time, he saw the that Graven that had grabbed his shoulders and pushed him down below was slowly breaking apart in the water. Its vacant eye sockets stared at Jack, and the creature snarled out a growl that drowned in bubbles as its head slid apart in the water.

  Jack looked across the river and saw that Skerren and Allegra were both okay. He sighed with relief and turned around to float on his back as the current carried him and his friends safely away.

  CHAPTER

  11

  The Battle of Gravenmurk Glen

  The river shallowed out and the current slowed as Jack, Skerren, and Allegra approached the area below Hypnova’s ship. The group came up on an empty riverbank and got out of the water. Jack stood and turned his messenger bag upside down on the ground. All the electronic devices he’d brought along, including the remaining Nuclear Knuckles glove on his left hand, were shorted out. Ruined. “So much for my bag of tricks,” he said to himself.

  “This way,” Skerren said, heading off toward a light that could be seen off in the distance.

  “C’mon,” Allegra said to Jack, and followed Skerren.

  Jack hustled after his friends as they hiked up the ridge. He caught up with them, and rubbed up and down on his arms to warm up as they walked along the river’s edge. He felt chilled to his bones. It was a cold night in the woods, and being soaked from the river made it worse. The creepy, dark forest oozed out a feeling of mysterious dread. Jack didn’t like it there, but it was exactly the kind of place he’d expected Secreteers to gather. The three of them kept following the river toward Hypnova’s ship. Sure enough, he heard what sounded like voices up ahead. A lot of voices, in fact.

  Jack, Skerren, and Allegra quieted down as they closed in on a rocky crag that the river ran over as it headed out of sight. The voices were coming from the other side. Inch by inch Jack and the others crawled toward the lip of the stone ledge and took cover behind a row of thorn bushes. They looked down on a clearing in the forest. The land before them fell away with a steep decline, and the river narrowed into a tight stream that ran through a rocky gorge. The rock walls on either side of the river had smooth grooves that lined their stone faces with long, straight rows, the kind of erosion that was the work of years and years. The trees were all set back from the gorge, and the fog lingered back with them as if an invisible fence were keeping it in place.

  Without any fog there to muddle his view, Jack could see at least two dozen robed figures standing atop the ridge walls on both sides of the water. The soft glow of the Gravenmurk mist lit the figures from behind, turning them into silhouettes with glowing eyes that seemed to float in the darkness beneath the hoods of their cloaks. There was no question who they were. Secreteers. Lots of them. Jack doubted anyone had ever seen so many in one place.

  “There,” Skerren whispered, pointing at a shadowy figure a hundred yards away. He was standing on a natural stone bridge that connected the two rock walls of the gorge. All the Secreteers were watching him. Moonlight twinkled like glitter on the surface of the water beneath his feet as it shone down to reveal his shape and size. He wore the same robes as the other Secreteers, only his were open. A golden clasp at his collar held the dark purple cloak in place, and the enveloping shroud seemed impossibly large as it fluttered in the breeze. Beneath his vestments he wore all black. His hood was up, and a mask covered his mouth and nose. Unknowable eyes stared out from the blackness within. The children all looked at one another in silence. There was no mistaking him…. It was Obscuro.

  Moments later the row of Secreteers on the right parted at the center, and a person who appeared to be their leader stepped forward. “Traitor!” she called out. “Do not attempt to flee this place. You are outnumbered and overmatched. Your time of judgment is at hand.”

  The head Secreteer threw back her hood, revealing an angry face with smooth, graceful features, pale skin, and flowing white hair.

  “Oblivia,” Obscuro said, giving a formal bow. “So good of you to come. It’s an honor.” His voice sounded positively reptilian.

  “You seem almost glad to see me,” Oblivia said.

  “Of course,” Obscuro replied. “I would have taken offense if anyone other than the matriarch of our order had dared to try to apprehend me.”

  A murmur ran through the contingent of Secreteers, no doubt bristling at Obscuro’s nerve and ego. Oblivia silenced them all with a wave of her hand.

  “You know better than that, Obscuro,” she said. “We have not come to ‘try,’ and we are not here to ‘apprehend.’”

  Oblivia nodded to her fellow Secreteers, and they slowly advanced on Obscuro’s position.

  “For hundreds of years the Clandestine Order has guarded the hidden truths of this planet,” Oblivia declared. “Your betrayal thr
eatens not only our sacred mission but also the very existence of our order. Your selfishness and cowardice are unacceptable. You cannot be trusted to keep the real secrets of this world—to hold the line between the imaginary and the real.” As the Secreteers closed in on Obscuro, blocking off his exit on both sides of the bridge, Oblivia prepared to render her final judgment. “For breaking your vows and violating the most sacred tenets of our order … for the damage you have already done to our cause and our good name, your life, Obscuro … is forfeit.”

  Obscuro let out a terse laugh. “All life on this planet is forfeit, Oblivia. The Rüstov are going to win this war. You know that as well as I.”

  “I know of no such thing,” Oblivia replied.

  Obscuro waved his hand. “Have it your way, then. Your decision is final? Your mind made up?”

  “The only choice in this matter was yours, Obscuro. You’ve sealed your own fate, and your lack of remorse leaves me with no regrets,” she told her former acolyte. “Take him!” she ordered.

  Allegra grabbed Jack’s hand. This secret gathering was about to turn into an execution. “What are we going to do?” she whispered. “We can’t just let them kill him!”

  “How do you propose we stop them?” Skerren asked. “Obscuro broke his vows. He knew what he was getting himself into.”

  “If they kill him, we’re back at square one,” Jack said. “We need to know what he knows. He’s the only Secreteer who’ll tell us anything about Glave and the virus.”

  “I know, but how are we supposed to save him?” Skerren asked. “I count at least twenty Secreteers down there, and there’s only three of us. Four, if you count Obscuro, who doesn’t even know we’re here or what our intentions are.”

  Jack grumbled to himself. Skerren had a point.

  The Secreteers closed in on Obscuro’s left and right flanks, and he jumped down from the bridge, landing on the stone riverbank. They followed him down, surrounding him.