I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy that, Jazen thought back.
Once they were inside, the rest of tower security actually wasn’t that hard to circumvent. Jack tricked the building’s ret-scanners and fingerprint-sensitive surfaces using only a blindfold and a pair of gloves. Jazen didn’t have retinas or fingerprints himself, so he was safe from detection as long as all the security cameras were looping videos of empty hallways—and thanks to Jack, they were.
Blindfolded, Jack found his way to Smart’s lab by reaching out with his mind to the tower’s directional signs and maps. Telling people how to get places was the primary function of those programs, so Jack was able to get them to work for him just by asking nicely. When they got to the lab door, Jazen pried open Speedrazor’s eyes for the ret-scanner.
“Peacemaker Speedrazor,” the scanner said in a very pleasant voice. “Access granted.” Speedrazor started to come around when he heard his name, but Jazen gave him another punch that ensured he was out for a good long time.
As the doors opened, Jack felt that rush again. He was moments away from finding out everything he always wanted to know. He had to keep his emotions in check. He couldn’t let his powers flare up and make the lights start flickering. Any power surge was sure to alert security. Keeping the SmartCams back at the Ivory Tower under wraps took concentration too. He couldn’t lose focus and let them tell everyone that he and Jazen had left the apartment. Jack walked to Smart’s personal computer in the darkness, trying to keep cool. All those crazy endurance tests he had suffered through in this lab might’ve been good for something after all, because he managed to stifle any involuntary effects of his power.
Jack stood at Smart’s desk and took out his birth certificate. All the hard work and study was about to pay off. He was about to feed the file into the computer screen when a voice startled him.
“I wasn’t aware we had a test scheduled this evening,” an all-too-familiar voice called out in the darkness, stopping Jack’s heart.
“No,” Jack whispered.
With the finish line only one step away, it was over. He took off his blindfold and turned around to see the tall, grim figure of Jonas Smart. In his hand was a shiny silver ray gun.
“Hello, Jack,” Smart continued in his frozen acid voice. “It seems the part of you that I’ve been warning everyone about has come to the fore at last.” It was Smart at his self-righteous best, and Jack could tell he was enjoying himself. “I knew I was right about you,” he said. “Both of you. Nobody wanted to listen to me because of Stendeval, but I knew.” He leaned down to check on Speedrazor, whom Jazen had left by the door. “I suppose I should be thanking you. This little break-in of yours has given me everything I need to make the Peacemakers permanent fixtures in Empire City.”
“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, Jonas?” Jazen said. “Power. That’s right, Jack and I know all about you, too.”
“Spare me the bluster, Emissary Knight,” Smart replied. “It’s obvious what’s going on here.”
He smiled, squeezed the trigger, and fired a shot directly into Jazen’s midsection.
“Jazen!” Jack screamed as his friend slid backward across the floor. Jazen groaned in pain, clutching at his stomach. Thankfully, he was only stunned.
“You, Emissary Knight, are either a Mecha Collaborator or you are currently under the control of this Rüstov-infected boy,” Smart continued. “Either way, you can rest assured that this time, I will have you dismantled. And Jack…” Smart grinned a sickening grin. “You’re finally going to see my dissection table after all.”
Smart motioned with the gun for Jack to get away from the computer. Jack stared daggers back at Smart, but he did as he was told. Smart had him exactly where he wanted him.
“What have you got there?” Smart asked, grabbing away Jack’s birth certificate. “Trying to steal my files?”
“It’s my file!” Jack shot back. “The one you lied about!”
Smart’s eyebrows perked up when he heard that. He seemed impressed as he looked over the “corrupted” file. “Figured that out, did you?” he said, brandishing the birth certificate that held Jack’s real name. “Well, you can’t blame me for wanting to keep the people of this city vigilant against the Rüstov. The less people know about you, the better. They have me to tell them what they need to know.” Smart fed the file into one of his computer screens and keyed in a command. An image of Jack’s scrambled birth certificate was projected into the air. “Computer, delete file,” Smart commanded with all the sympathy of a jagged rock.
“NO!” Jack yelled. The file turned red and started blinking, fading away a little more with each blink. Jack tried to stop the computer, but nothing happened. He tried to take control of Smart’s gun, but he couldn’t even talk to it. Something was wrong.
His powers were gone!
Smart grinned again. “Power nullifiers,” he said. “Specifically tuned to you. I have them stationed throughout the tower. They send out a signal that prevents you from accessing those extraordinary abilities of yours.”
Jack’s birth certificate blinked its last few blinks and then vanished. Jack felt his heart break. His name. His family. All of it was gone, and he was literally powerless to stop it. “Why?” he asked Smart in disbelief. “How did you…”
Smart laughed as Jack tried to figure out where his powers had gone. “What did you think all those extra tests I ran on you were for?” he asked. “I pushed you to the limits of your endurance, recorded your stress levels, and tracked your power output at every stage. I isolated your thoughtprint, the actual energy signature you emit when using your power. So far, tower security has only seen what you wanted them to see, but I’ve been tracking you from the moment you crashed through my window.”
“Why didn’t you trip the alarms, then?” Jazen asked with a grunt as he rose to his feet. “Why didn’t you call the Inner Circle? You’re hiding something.”
“That’s far enough, Emissary Knight,” Smart said, turning his gun back to bear on Jazen. Jazen stopped where he was. “To answer your question, I terminated security measures for the lab after you entered. I wanted this moment for myself.” Smart shrugged. “I had to see what you were up to, didn’t I? Now I know.”
“I told you,” Jazen said. “We know about you, too. We know that you’re the Great Collaborator. The real one.”
Smart’s eyes widened. “The Great Collaborator?” he exclaimed. “Are you mad?” Now it was Smart’s turn to stare in disbelief. He looked at Jazen like he was crazy. “I caught the Great Collaborator,” he said. “Silico was a Mecha, just like you! I caught him shutting down the city’s defense grid. He let the Rüstov into Empire City!”
“You framed Silico,” Jazen said. “He didn’t have any motive to work with the Rüstov. No Mecha does. You’re the only one who benefited from the invasion. You’re the one who got to play king and run this city with your fear and division, and you lied about Jack to make sure things stayed that way!”
“I lied about Jack because when people aren’t scared, they relax!” Smart yelled. “I don’t want the people of this city relaxed, I want them vigilant! If there’s a price to be paid for the security of the Imagine Nation, then it has to be paid. If it means a little boy doesn’t get to find out who his parents are, then so be it!”
“Nice try,” Jazen said. “I’m not buying it. Someone’s working for the other side here. The Rüstov have an agent that’s been moving against Jack since he got to Empire City, and I can’t think of anyone who’s got more against him than you do.”
“How dare you!” Smart bellowed. “I’ve kept this city safe! I don’t have to stand for this—I know the truth!”
The way Smart yelled at Jazen made Jack start to think that either he was a really good liar, or maybe he was telling the truth. He looked so unbelievably offended that his loyalties were being called into question. Jack wondered if it was possible that they were wrong about him.
“Here!” Smart
said, using his pocket holo-computer to bring up a screen for all to see. “We’ll see who the Collaborator is here. Someone in this room is transmitting! Someone is sending a message in Rüstov-speak right now, and it’s certainly not me. What do you have to say for yourself now?”
“What?” Jack said. He was totally confused. “Jazen, what’s going on?”
Jazen looked just as shocked as Jack did. He walked up to the holo-screen and stared at it. It was a schematic of the room, with a readout tracking Wi-Fi transmissions that were being sent out into the air. “No,” he said, obviously devastated by what he was seeing. He put his hand over his mouth and looked over at Jack with horror in his eyes.
“Jack, I’m sorry, it’s…” Jazen choked on the words, barely able to get them out. “It’s me.”
Before Jack could reply, the massive round window in Smart’s lab exploded inward and the team of Rüstov Left-Behinds crashed into the room, guns blazing.
CHAPTER
15
The Awful Truth
Jack ducked for cover as broken glass whipped across the room. The Rüstov took control of the lab in seconds. They had the element of surprise and moved with ruthless efficiency. Jack and the others never stood a chance. Smart turned to fire on the intruders and grazed one of them with his ray gun, but not before another one hit him with some kind of electrovolt weapon. Smart screamed and dropped to the ground in an unconscious heap. Jazen rushed at the invaders as they came in, but the lead Left-Behind just raised a hand in his direction with his palm up.
“Freeze,” the Rüstov said, and Jazen’s systems locked up, stopping him in place.
“Uh!” Jazen grunted as he ground to a halt. Quickly realizing what was happening to him, he shouted to Jack. “I can’t move, Jack! Get out of here!”
Jack backpedaled a few steps, completely lost.
“Run, Jack!” Jazen screamed again, more urgently. “Hide!”
Jack got it together and bolted just as one of the four Left-Behinds dove for him. Jack’s attacker just missed him, and as it clawed at his feet from the ground, Jack ran back into the shadows of the lab. He was desperate to get out of there, or at the very least, to lose his pursuers somewhere among Smart’s many experiments. He was also frightened beyond measure. He was trapped there alone without his powers, and Jazen was locked up like a statue.
What was going on with Jazen? Jack didn’t know what was happening, but everything he thought he knew before he had broken into SmartTower was clearly wrong. It was a terrible feeling. It terrified Jack. Despite all the things that made Jack extraordinary, he was still just a boy of twelve, and all young boys get scared from time to time. Even the brave ones.
As Jack ducked behind a lab desk filled with machines he could no longer talk to, he heard his Left-Behind speaking to the others. “Fan out,” the Rüstov ordered. “Find the boy.”
The three Para-Soldiers struck out after Jack. They split up in favor of a three-pronged approach and stalked Jack across the lab slowly, simultaneously moving up the left, right, and center of the room. Jack’s Left-Behind, the one that was currently using Cyberai’s leg, stayed back at the window with Jazen. Jack could see what they were doing. They wanted to flush him out.
“What have you done to me?” Jazen asked the Left-Behind. “What is this?”
The Rüstov moved toward Jazen, its rusty scrap-metal gears scraping against each other as they turned. It looked Jazen up and down. “You are infected,” it said in English. Across the lab, Jack’s ears perked up in his hiding space.
“That’s impossible,” Jack heard Jazen say. “I’m an android. Your virus doesn’t affect me.”
The Rüstov grunted. “Yours is not the organic virus lying dormant in the boy,” it replied. “Perhaps you have experienced an unusually high amount of system errors recently? More glitches? Yours is a computer virus. What you see, we see. What you hear, we hear. We slave your systems to our will. We have many weapons.”
“Spyware,” Jazen said through gritted teeth. “You scum.”
Jack drew in a deep breath as a Left-Behind crept by the lab desk he was hiding behind. It didn’t see him because it kept moving. Jack shuddered as he exhaled, and backtracked to an area of lab that the Left-Behind had already covered. It was funny—as he went, he couldn’t shake the memory of hiding from Mrs. Theedwheck back in the St. Barnaby’s library. If he got caught this time, he was going to get a lot more than a yardstick thwacking. He had to get out of there. He crawled across the floor as slowly and quietly as he could, inching his way toward one of the lab exits. As he crept through the lab, he could hear Jazen and the head Left-Behind talking, even see them through an opening between two equipment racks. One of the Rüstov soldiers searching for Jack was between him and the exit. He stopped where he was, to keep safely hidden.
“How long?” Jazen asked. “When was I infected? Why me?”
The Rüstov looked at him with scorn. “You think you are unique. You think that somehow you matter. Rüstov scouts have been coming to this galaxy for years, preparing this planet for the Empire.”
“What are you saying?” Jazen asked. “There are others? How many?”
The Rüstov bared its rotten teeth in a sick kind of smile. “Did you think the Rüstov Armada would simply go away after the first invasion failed?” the creature asked. “The war is not over. Our tactics are stealth. Patience. That is how we first entered your world so long ago. By infecting a Mecha like you. By forcing him to shut down your defenses.”
Jazen glared at the Rüstov, simmering with rage. “His name was Silico,” he said, defiant.
“Your names mean nothing to us,” the Rüstov told Jazen. “We are the most advanced species in the universe. Renewable technology. Infinite life. Deadly purpose. That is what the Rüstov Armada represents. You are food and tools, nothing more.”
The more Jack listened to the Rüstov talk to Jazen, the angrier he got. He had his own ideas about what the Rüstov Armada represented, and the Rüstov weren’t going to get away with this. He wasn’t going to let them. The three Left-Behinds searching for Jack were now far enough away for him to make it out, but he couldn’t go through with it. He had heard what the Rüstov had just said, and he couldn’t let it go. Silico was the Great Collaborator, but not the way everyone thought. He had been acting against his will twelve years ago, and Jazen was in the same boat now. Jazen was infected. Jack knew what that felt like better than anyone in the world. There was no way he was going to abandon his friend.
But what could Jack do without his powers? Jack looked around quickly, taking stock of his environment and trying to find anything he could use to his advantage. The three Rüstov had reached the far end of the lab. Having cleared the rest of the room, they were now coming back toward him. If he stayed where he was, he would be cornered, but that didn’t have to mean he was trapped. Not here, it didn’t. Something in the lab caught Jack’s eye. He got an idea, and reached out to flip on a familiar machine the old-fashioned way. With his fingers.
The Left-Behinds were quick to react to the sudden activity on the opposite side of the lab. Their leader motioned to the others to head toward the running machine. As one of the decaying Left-Behinds closed in on Jack’s position, Jack got a good look at the “most advanced species in the universe.” Its drying skin was cracking to reveal oily bones and metal. Its rusty iron frame shed dirty orange-brown flakes as it walked. Jack would be doing this thing a favor, he thought. He hit a switch and ran as frozen carbonite poured forth from an overhead storage tank, completely covering the oncoming Left-Behind. This wasn’t the aerosol stuff that Smart had frozen Jack with a few days earlier. This was pure and undiluted. The Left-Behind screeched in pain as its temperature dropped a hundred degrees below absolute zero, and every inch of its body crystallized and froze. Jack threw a piece of lab equipment at the creature and it shattered like glass, sprinkling across the floor in a million pieces.
“Jack, what are you doing?” Jazen yelled. “Get out of
here!”
“Not without you!” Jack shouted back.
The other two Left-Behind stalkers came around carefully and shut off the flow of carbonite, but Jack was long gone from the lab station by then. Angered by the loss of their comrade, the Rüstov started throwing Smart’s experiments and inventions this way and that, searching more aggressively for Jack now. The head Left-Behind stormed into the lab’s work area as well and joined the hunt. It was just what Jack was hoping for. Once the coast was clear, he sneaked back out into the open. He went not to Jazen but over to Smart, who was still out cold on the floor. “Don’t worry!” he whispered while going through Smart’s pockets, looking for something. “I’ve got an idea.” Jack reached into Smart’s inside pocket and pulled out his holo-computer. He held it up. “Here!” he said, thinking that if he could shut off the power nullifiers, he could call for help. He could save himself and Jazen. He’d even save Smart.
But when Jack looked up at Jazen, he saw that he was twitching again. Another glitch. Jack knew what that meant now. Jazen was transmitting. The Rüstov could see what he saw, and that meant…
“There you are!” the head Left-Behind said as it grabbed Jack up off the ground. Its two comrades that were still standing were there as well. They had him now.
“NO!” Jazen yelled, struggling to break free. He strained to the point that Jack thought he might blow a fuse, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move.
“Now you see,” the Rüstov said, gloating. “You cannot defeat us when your own bodies betray you. It was you who alerted us to his existence in the first place! It was your eyes that told us there was a child resisting infection in Empire City. Your eyes told us everything.”
“Jack, I’m sorry,” Jazen said. “I’m sorry, I never—” Jazen broke off, his eyes darting down toward the ground. It seemed he couldn’t even look at Jack.
“It’s not your fault, Jazen,” Jack said. “You didn’t know.”
The Accidental Hero Page 23
