Jack leaned back in his chair. He found comfort in Lorem’s words. He thought about the closest thing he had to a big brother—Jazen Knight. He wasn’t human. He didn’t even have blood. That didn’t mean he wasn’t family. Stendeval had told him something similar when he first came to the Imagine Nation. He had a family, and right now, they needed him. He had to save Jazen. He had to make Stendeval’s sacrifice matter. He had to do something for Allegra, Roka, Blue, Zhi, and all the innocent people the Rüstov had taken.
Jack stood up. His body was worn-out and on the verge failing him, but he wouldn’t let himself quit. “Lorem, give me your hand. I’ve got an idea.”
Jack grabbed Lorem Ipsum’s hands and spoke for two full minutes, saying nothing but absolute gibberish. Virtua, Midknight, Trea, and the other Circlemen all stopped and stared as Jack blathered on in a language only Lorem Ipsum could understand. When Jack finished talking, she touched his hand again, unscrambling his words.
“Got all that?” Jack asked. Lorem nodded tentatively.
“Got all what?” Khalix demanded. “What did you just tell her?”
Jack shook his head. “Sorry, Khalix. Private conversation. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?”
Midknight brought his hands together. “Very clever.”
“I don’t understand. What’s clever?” Noteworthy asked. “What did he do?”
“Jack just cut the Rüstov out of the loop,” Midknight explained. “The Rüstov prince can’t listen in on his plans if it can’t understand what he’s saying. The question is, what was said?”
Lorem swallowed hard. “This is risky, Jack. I don’t think I like it.”
Jack snorted out a small laugh. “I know I don’t like it. But this is war. Everything is risky.” He put up his hand, heading off any further discussion. “Let’s not say too much just yet. You can talk more about it after I’m gone.”
“What do you mean, after you’re gone?” Noteworthy asked. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going exactly where you told me to, Dad.” Noteworthy turned three different shades of red and started yelling at the top of his lungs until Jack got fed up and disconnected his holo-screen. “Virtua, call Smart back and tell him to get ready to send Jazen home. I’m turning myself in.”
CHAPTER
18
Getting Smart
Night fell as Jack arrived at SmartTower, carried there by flying Mechas. Khalix chirped in Jack’s ear the whole way. Jack could tell he was nervous as they approached the top of the building and Smart’s lab. The glass from the lab’s great round window split into eight curved triangles and spiraled open like an aperture door. The Mechas brought Jack and Trea inside and set them down.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Jack, but whatever it is, I promise you it won’t work.”
“Said the broken record,” Jack told Khalix. “Don’t worry. You’ll find out what I’m up to soon enough.” Jack was enjoying the opportunity to taunt Khalix for a change. He had to take pleasure in the little things, because they were all he had left. Everything else hurt. Jack’s muscles ached, his head was throbbing, and his fever had climbed to a hundred and four degrees. Smart and his WarHawks were waiting in the lab when Jack got there. He locked eyes with Smart as he entered and as a result missed a small set of steps leading down toward his workstation. He stumbled and fell, hitting the ground hard. Trea helped Jack up. He was breathing heavily. His chest was glowing. Jack absolutely hated that he had made such a terrible entrance. For his part, Smart barely seemed to notice. He pointed behind him at a holo-screen that had just blinked out.
“That was Circlewoman Virtua. I didn’t believe her at first. She said you agreed to come here?” Smart looked Jack up and down, frowning at the state he was in. “More likely, you were too weak to do anything about it. Don’t tell me you’ve finally accepted your fate. . . . You’re truly ready to think of the greater good and end this?”
“That’s exactly what I’m here to do,” Jack said, dusting himself off. He felt flushed. He wiped his brow and found that he was dripping with sweat. “Where’s Jazen?”
Smart nodded to his guards, and a row of WarHawks stepped aside to make room for the prisoner Jazen Knight. Armed escorts marched him in with his hands bound in electro-cuffs. Jack breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Jazen was still in one piece.
Jack ran to his friend. “Are you okay?”
“Jack?” Jazen looked back and forth between Jack and the WarHawks as they deactivated his manacles. “What are you doing here?”
“He made a deal,” Smart said. “He wants to do the right thing.”
“What?” The WarHawks went to place Jazen’s cuffs on Jack’s wrists. Jazen pushed them back. “Get away from him!”
“Jazen, it’s okay!” Jack said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Jazen glared at Jack as he offered his wrists to the WarHawks. “You don’t look fine to me.”
Jack shrugged. “I’m not really. But I will be. Now, so will you.” He looked around at the lab’s antiseptic white walls, organized workstations, and glaring bright lights. “The last time you and I were in here together, you ran a pair of Left-Behinds out the window to save me. It’s my turn now.”
Jazen shook his head. “If you think I’m going to let you go through with this . . .”
“I’m doing it, Jazen. They took everything. I’ve got nothing left to lose except you, and that’s not gonna happen.”
Jazen’s nostrils flared, but he kept his cool. “I can’t leave you alone here, Jack. No way. Unless . . .” He leaned in close to Jack and whispered. “Tell me you have some kind of a plan here.”
Jack tilted his head to the side. “I have an idea. We’ll see how far I get with it. Don’t worry, Trea’s here to help.”
Trea shook her head. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“We don’t have time to get into every last detail,” Jack told Jazen. “You have places to be. You need to get up to Mount Nevertop with Lorem Ipsum, and you need to take Roka’s ship.”
“Roka’s ship?” Jazen repeated. “What are you talking about? Roka’s ship is wrecked. It can’t fly anywh—”
Jazen stopped talking midsentence and locked eyes with Jack. The two friends stared at each other in silence for a few moments while everyone else looked on with confused faces.
Smart rolled his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I’ve clearly tolerated this heartfelt good-bye of yours far too long. Enough, both of you. Circlewoman Virtua and I have come to an accord. Commander Knight, you are free to go. I suggest you take your leave before I rethink our agreement. As for you, Jack, you may consider yourself my prisoner. At least for the next thirty seconds.”
“Listen to him, Jazen,” Jack said. “Go.”
Jack and Jazen shook hands.
“Good luck,” Jazen said as the Mecha guards got ready to take him home.
“To all of us,” Jack replied.
The Mechas flew out the window carrying Jazen in their arms. As soon as they were gone, twenty WarHawks trained their weapons on Jack.
“Jack, what are you doing?” Khalix asked. “You’re not really staying here. You can’t!”
Jack remained calm, even as a score of red laser-sight dots danced over his forehead and chest. “I just want to say one thing, if that’s all right.”
Smart motioned for Jack to go ahead. “Get on with it.”
Jack put up his hands. “Don’t shoot.”
Smart snorted out a laugh. “I don’t know why, but I was expecting something more.” He turned to the WarHawks. “Fire.”
Khalix screamed as Smart gave the order. Trea covered her ears and turned away.
Nothing happened.
Smart’s eyes narrowed and he furrowed his brow. “Fire,” he said again. Still, nothing happened. The WarHawks stood frozen in place. Smart pounded the keys on his pocket holo-computer. “What’s going on here? Fire, I said!”
&nb
sp; Jack calmly deactivated his electro-cuffs and rubbed his wrists as the metal components of his shackles hit the floor with a clank. “Sorry, Smart. Your WarHawks work for me now. Or did you forget that I control machines?” He walked up to Smart’s robotic commandos and looked them over. “This is nice hardware. Really impressive design work, I mean that.”
Smart’s mouth fell open as Jack walked freely around his lab, decidedly not riddled with bullets. He was at a loss. “I don’t understand. My nullifiers . . .”
“Yeah, about those. They don’t work on me anymore.” Jack snapped his fingers and Smart’s holo-computer blinked out of his hand. Smart stared at his empty palm in disbelief. “Looking for this?” Jack asked, holding Smart’s holo-computer in his right hand.
“When you sent these guys after me back in Hero Square, I was so shocked by all this Rüstov tech inside me, I couldn’t even think straight. I had an inkling that my powers still worked around them once I made it out of Cognito, but the WarHawk chasing me died out before I could be sure. It wasn’t until you surrounded us at the Valorian Garrison that I knew for certain.” Jack raised his shoulders. “I don’t know if my thoughtprint is different because of what the Rüstov did to me, or if I’ve just grown a lot in the last few years, but either way, your software needs an upgrade.”
Jack winked at Smart, and it wasn’t anger he saw staring back in his nemesis’s eyes. It was fear. “But if your powers work . . . you tricked me! You told that Mecha Knight something before he left. You told him with your mind!”
“Don’t worry about Jazen,” Jack said. “He has his job to do. You have yours. You want to hear what it is?”
“My job?” Smart scoffed. “You must be out of your mind. I’m not going to be part of anything you two are up to.” Smart rifled through the drawers of the nearest lab station, trying to find a weapon to use against Jack.
“Nothing you have in here can hurt me, Smart. You might as well listen. I have a proposal that I think might interest you.”
“Nothing you have to say interests me.”
There was a loud stomping noise as all twenty WarHawks in the lab turned and aimed their guns at Smart. “Hear me out,” Jack said. “While I’m still asking nicely.”
Smart frowned at a useless gun he had just taken out of a desk drawer and tossed it on the ground. It didn’t take the world’s smartest man to realize he was completely at Jack’s mercy.
“That was pretty cool,” Trea told Jack.
Jack smiled. “I know, right? We can’t do it this way, though. We have to work together. That’s why you’re here, Trea. I need your brain.”
Trea’s eyes bugged out.
“Not literally,” Jack said. “We’re gonna be lab partners again. Smart, too, if he’ll agree to it. We’re going to do some work on the Rüstov virus. The one inside me.” Jack tapped his chest and launched into a series of painful coughs.
Smart studied Jack with suspicious eyes. “What’s your angle?”
“No angle,” Jack said. “I want a truce.”
Smart scowled. “This from the boy aiming twenty guns at my head.”
Jack made the WarHawks lower their weapons. “I had to get your attention somehow. I told you. I want us to fight the Rüstov, not each other.”
“You are the Rüstov,” Smart said. “Your leader doesn’t want a truce. He wants our surrender.”
“He’s not my leader.”
“He will be,” Khalix told Jack. “Soon. Very soon . . .”
Jack winced as Khalix spoke inside his head. It was a reaction that did not go unnoticed by Smart. “He’s talking to you again, isn’t he? The Rüstov prince? You’re about to surrender yourself. There’s only one way to end the threat you pose.”
“You’re not using your imagination. I don’t have to become Revile. Not the way you think.”
“You can’t stop it. You said yourself they changed the way you think.”
“Maybe, but they couldn’t change who I am. I know that now. And I know how to beat them. The Rüstov don’t even realize it, but they showed me how. They gave me everything I need.”
Smart remained unconvinced. “What are you talking about?”
Jack tapped his temple. “They put every page of the Rüstov history book in here. Nothing but war, that’s all they know. They were trying to show me how hopeless this all is. They thought it would break me, but they don’t know me. I don’t quit. All they did was take me to school. Planning, strategy, battle, conquest. I’m supposed to be their ultimate weapon. That’s fine. As far as I’m concerned, they just showed me how to use it against them.”
“But they control what you can and can’t use your powers on. From the looks of things, they’re about to control more than that.”
“That’s where you come in,” Jack told Smart. “I need you to build a new nullifier. One that’s tuned in to Khalix’s thoughtprint.” Jack heard Khalix gasp and allowed himself a slight smile. It felt good to strike a little fear into the Rüstov prince’s heart. Smart opened his mouth to talk but shut it without saying anything. Jack had the old man’s attention. “Once Khalix is blocked out of my mind, I’ll be able to use my powers on whatever I want. It won’t matter how much juice the Magus pumps into him. My power will take over and shut him down, just like it’s been doing ever since I was a baby. It’ll just be me again. Then I can take the Rüstov apart piece by piece.”
Smart rubbed his chin, deep in thought.
“It won’t work,” Khalix said. “He won’t do it. You don’t have the time.”
“Khalix is scared,” Jack said. “Right now, he’s scared. I can feel it. Tell me this isn’t at least worth a shot.”
Smart was still skeptical. “If I fail, you’ll turn into Revile and kill us all.” He keyed up the TimeScope footage of Jack destroying the Calculan fleet after turning into Revile. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten about this?”
Jack shook his head, studying the images intently. “I haven’t forgotten. Quite the opposite, actually.”
“Think of what people will say about you if you can stop Jack’s infection,” Trea told Smart. “You’ll be a hero. You might even get elected Circleman again. Don’t tell me you don’t want that.”
“She’s right,” Jack said. “I know you, Smart. For you, the only thing worse than losing this war would be us winning it without you. Work with us. We can do it here in your lab. You can take any precautions you want. I won’t fight you.”
Smart stared at Jack for five endless seconds, then slowly nodded. “If we do this, we do it my way. My lab, my research, my rules. Whatever you might know about machines, you don’t know mine. You don’t know the intricacies of my process for identifying a thoughtprint or creating a nullifier to block it out. I won’t have you questioning me. We don’t have time for your usual brand of insolence.”
Jack offered Smart his hand. “Don’t look now, but I think you and I just agreed to work together.”
Smart looked at Jack’s hand like it had been dipped in raw sewage. He turned up his nose and walked away, motioning for Jack and Trea to follow. “Let’s get started. Dawn is just a few hours away.”
CHAPTER
19
The Fate of Jack Blank
Despite his initial misgivings, Smart dove into the work with vigor. He busted out all the old favorites, zapping Jack with electroshocks, firing him around a centrifuge, frying him with heat blasts, and flash-freezing him in liquid carbonite.
“Are we almost done with this part?” Jack asked after Smart thawed him out for the third time.
“I’m not doing this for fun,” Smart said. “I can’t isolate your parasite’s thoughtprint without mapping your brain wave activity.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “And that requires tracking its thought pattern as it responds to negative stimuli. I know. I remember the drill. I’m just saying, you should have enough by now.”
“Jack’s right,” Trea said. She had split into three supersmart versions of herself, all of whom were sitti
ng at holo-computers, crunching numbers as the data poured in. “Check my work,” the first one said, handing a sheet of SmartPaper to the other two.
The second Trea nodded in agreement. “Looks good.”
“We’re ready,” the third Trea agreed. “We’ve got a statistically significant sample set. Time for phase two.”
Smart grumbled. “Get on the operating table. We’re wasting time.”
Jack shook his head and limped over to the operating table. His strength was fading fast, so he had the WarHawks help him across the lab and lift him onto the table. He knew that using Smart’s soldiers as his personal assistants grated on Smart, and he didn’t want to distract the old man from his work, but he just couldn’t resist.
“Take your shirt off,” Smart said to Jack. “I want to get a look at that infection.” Jack pulled off his shirt, and all three Treas gasped. Smart’s eyes narrowed. “Just as I suspected.”
Jack looked down and saw that his entire chest was covered in wires and machinery. Khalix had been busy. Jack tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in his lungs forced him back down. “I wish I could say I’m surprised to see this, but . . .” He lifted a hand and let it fall on the table. Smart stuck sensor after sensor onto Jack’s neck and forehead. He plugged a wire into the apparatus that was once Jack’s chest and ran a diagnostic scan.
“Infection level: forty-seven percent,” Smart announced, reading the figure off his handheld holo-computer. The handheld beeped and Smart looked again. “Forty-seven point one.”
“Hear that?” Khalix asked Jack. “You’re running out of time. With every inch of ground you lose, I grow stronger. Can you feel it? I know you can.”
Jack’s vision started to blur. He shut his eyes tight, but that was no help. He felt like he had swatches of sandpaper taped beneath his eyelids. Smart kept working, plugging more wires into him and checking the connections. He moved to a new desk and called up a holo-magnifier. Sparks started flying as he leaned over the table and fired up his tools. Jack assumed he was burning circuits into a chip. He cracked his eyes open to get a look. It wasn’t easy keeping track of what Smart was up to. That’s why Jack wanted Trea there, to keep him honest. Ordinarily, Jack was enough of a computer whiz to stay on top of what Smart was doing without any trouble, but in his feverish state, he was glad he had Trea there to catch anything he missed. Meanwhile, Khalix kept trying to speed up his transformation before Smart’s work was done.
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