The Jovian Legacy (33 page)

Jack
hoped like hell they didn’t see he was a quivering wreck
inside. “I have come to ask the permission of your
constituency to take my family back to Earth.” He paused and
waited for their response.

Premier
Tiberius cleared his throat. “I can understand that the
separation of your family has caused you a great deal of grief.
However, you can understand that your mission is for a duration of
time within the terms that we have agreed upon, and we have made
considerable financial allowance for your charges so their needs are
well taken care of,” he said with forced empathy.

Jack
knew he had to be strong. “With all due respect, Sir,” he
continued, “Megan has become seriously ill and I have grave
fears for her,” all the while praying they wouldn’t pick
up on his little fib.

Premier
Tiberius spoke amongst his men in Egyptian. Jack thought it was a
little rude, but kept his polite demeanour. They continued their
discussions for another five minutes or so before Premier Tiberius
turned back to Jack.

“It
has been agreed by my fellow dignitaries that you may take your
family back for the duration of your mission, but on the
understanding that you must all return on completion of it. You have
become citizens of Jovian, and I trust you can understand your great
worth to our people.”

Jack
audibly sighed. He couldn’t believe how he’d just pulled
it off. He couldn’t wait to get back to his family with the
good news. He signed some documents, not even bothering to read
them, as he secretly knew he was out of there for good anyway, and
shook everyone’s hands, smiling and thanking them, and thinking
what a slimy lot of creeps they turned out to be. He didn’t
waste any time getting back to his parents’ place.

He
hurried to the front door bursting with excitement, knocked and
turned the handle, not waiting for it to be answered. The entire
family was sitting around the table and looked up when Jack entered
the room. Ben was the first to speak.

“Excuse
me, Sir?” he questioned. He looked astonished. Everyone
looked astonished. Jack grinned at him, animated, almost yelling, “I
did it! You’re all coming home!”

“Excuse
me?” his father repeated.

“You’re
coming back home with me. Isn’t that great news?…What’s
with all the excuse mees?”

His
mother got up and stood beside her husband, eyeing Jack warily.
“Call the authorities, Ben,” she said. They were all
looking suspiciously at Jack. Jack’s smile wavered, but
thought they were having a little joke.

“Mum,
Dad, what’s going on?” Jack said, his excitement waning.

Ben
Dunlop picked up a device and pressed a button. In less than a
minute Jack heard sirens; not the usual sound of a siren, but a
higher-pitched pealing. It was the first time he’d heard them
on Jovian. Before he was able to get his head around his family’s
strange behaviour five men dressed in black suits (like the men from
the black Volvo) burst into the house and seized him.

“What
the hell are you doing? Dad, what are they doing?” Jack had
just enough time to glance at his family, all with worried
expressions, before he was roughly pushed out of the door and into a
black Volvo estate.

It
was too much for Jack, thoughts wildly racing around in his head.

The
men in the black Volvo estate!
he
realised. It was a long time since he had seen them.

The
car sped through wide boulevards, escorted by air vehicles overhead.
Jack thought he must be having a nightmare and hoped he would wake up
soon. His thoughts quickly turned to Megan.

She
has no idea what is going on up here.

The
car glided down a ramp and into a wide tunnel lit by a thousand
little round lights. Another few minutes later the vehicle circled
into an expansive, well-lit area with a domed roof and stopped
outside a large foyer. Jack was ushered through the sliding doors,
taken up an escalator that moved twice as fast as he’d used
before, and into a large room with black leather furniture. A man
emerged from another door.

“Please
sit down, Jack,” he stated, a cold look in his eye. Jack
couldn’t believe it; the man was Timos, Sobek’s brother,
who Jack thought had perished in the explosion of the Underworld.

“I…
thought you were…” Jack quavered.

“Dead?
You thought I was dead?” Timos finished for him with a quick
laugh. “That was spectacular wasn’t it. But you don’t
think I was anywhere near there do you? When are you going to
realise that we
don’t die.
We live forever! I’m
not the young man I appear to be. And my sister, whom you are very
fond of, is a hundred and fourteen years old!” He laughed
again.

Jack
felt sick to his stomach. “What have you done to my family?”
he frantically asked, “they don’t know me.”

“You
don’t expect us to let you take them back to Earth, do you?”
Timos half yelled. “You must be out of your little mind! They
belong to Jovian, and you will never take them away from us. As I
said to you a long time ago, we have big plans for
our
girls.”

“What
have you done to them?” Jack asked again, simmering with anger.

“We
simply wiped their memory of you,” Timos gloated, rounding on
him. “You do the job that you have been commissioned to do and
we will do our job.”

Jack
was livid. It confirmed his suspicions of Premier Tiberius and his
fellow dignitaries.

“Once
you have completed your mission, then we can get on with ours. Once
Jovian has been rejuvenated by Earth’s energy, we will take
control of both worlds,” Timos announced icily.

“And
what will that be?” Jack glared at him with such disgust that
he felt like punching him.

Timos
answered him in a very intimidating way. “Do you remember the
Sphinx? She was once real, with the head of a woman, the body of a
lion and the wings of a bird. She was once our ruler. We intend to
create another, but this time she will be different. She will be
used as an almighty conduit to transform Earth’s energy to
Jovian’s.”

Jack
stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

“We
have been bringing people from Earth for many years via the Bermuda
Triangle for scientific research, to use their DNA to create our new
ruler,” Timos stated, enjoying the look on Jack’s face.

“Only
one woman has provided this. Her name is Megan. She didn’t
know the actual reason why I was in med school with her,”
Timos finished off, showing his true colours.

Jack
had gone completely white. He managed to whisper, “The girls.”

“Yes,
indeed!” Timos confirmed, his finger in the air. “Well
done, my son, now can you see why you simply cannot take
our
girls away from us? They are destined to create our new ruler. We
have created them as super intelligent beings, which is the very
essence of our Sphinx. Their minds will be used to create her, but
whose minds will, alas, once their use is finished with, be left in a
vegetative state. You could almost certainly have them back then,
we’ll see. After all, they won’t be of any use to us
after that.” He laughed at his final words.

Jack
felt sick and dizzy and blacked out. He came to a while later when
he found himself in some sort of sick bay with glass walls. It smelt
clinical. He sat up, and as he did two nurses hurried in and tried
to give him a drink of something, which he whacked out of their hands
and stormed out. He didn’t get very far when he was once again
seized by the suited men, who forcibly sat him down, this time in
front of a giant computer screen.

Timos
strolled in. He had that steely grey look in his eyes, the same look
on their first meeting.

“Perhaps
you would like to see what we have in store for
our
girls. And then we must erase your memory,” he said evenly,
his mouth curling into a manic sneer.

Jack
couldn’t afford to let that happen. He jumped up and punched
the man nearest to him and tried to run, but four men were stronger
than one and he was forced to sit down again in front of the screen.
He saw Megan’s beautiful clones being lead into the centre of a
vast concrete pad that was surrounded by what looked like a huge
temple. They were in a trance-like state and formed a circle facing
a woman who
was
morphing into a Sphinx.
It
wasn’t simply a structure of limestone bedrock but a massive
manmade creation that was alive and moving. What happened next
frightened the living daylights out of Jack. Its eyes opened, and
blinding, piercing, colourful rays of light shone over the
surrounding land, and forming within the rainbow of colour were the
words,
“Sinestu-ipini-itxaro-ahalguzti”.
Jack could hear cheering
from hundreds of thousands of people all around the countryside.
That was enough for him; he spun around in his seat and stood up.
Timos was standing there like an army major with his hands behind his
back, a smug grin on his face.

Jack
marched right up to his face and yelled, “I will
never
allow you to do this!”

Timos
slowly took a step back and, without saying a word, nodded to his
men. Jack didn’t hear or see anything, but felt weird, as if a
bolt of lightening had zapped him. He felt his legs go like jelly
and had to sit down. Then he wondered where the hell he was and who
these people were who he’d never seen in his life before. He
even had trouble remembering who he was, but he knew he lived in a
small town in the north and his parents had gone missing on a yacht.
He had a sudden feeling of loss, but didn’t know why.

Chapter
25

F
or
days Megan had gone through the motions of existing. She had filled
her days with sitting in front of her computer, waiting to hear from
Jack. At the end of the week, with still no word, she began to
worry. She had, however, been in touch with the girls every day, but
two days ago they had suddenly stopped communicating with her, and
she couldn’t understand why. She was completely baffled by
their silence. She tried to contact them again for the fourth time
that day and finally, later that evening, there was a new message
waiting for her.

“Yay,
finally,” she said aloud, opening it. Her joy turned to
bewilderment. In front of her the message read,
“Whoever
you are we are issuing a warning that we see your persistence in
attempting to establish contact with us comes under our jurisdiction
as an offence, and we have passed your personal details onto the
Jovian Criminal Investigations Bureau.”

Megan
was stunned. She couldn’t understand why she had received a
message like that from her beautiful sisters.

“Oh
please, Jack, let me know what’s going on!” she cried,
pulling at her hair.

Chapter 26

J
ack
couldn’t get a grasp of his surroundings. All he knew was that
one minute he was sitting in front of his computer like he did every
weekend, and now he found himself in a room he’d never seen
before. And the furniture was completely different from his place.
Timos walked in. Jack remembered his manners and greeted Timos,
offering his hand and introducing himself.

Timos
shook Jack’s hand, stating, “Yes, we have met, but you
will not remember me…..or anyone else for that matter.”
He smirked at himself. Jack pulled his hand away. He felt weird,
then everything went haywire in his head. He started seeing visions
and asked to be excused. Within a short time everything had come
back to him.

Those
slime balls are trying to erase my memory!
Jack
realised, telling himself that they were not going to get away with
it. Trouble was, his entire family’s memory had been wiped as
well and knew it was going to be impossible to convince them to
return to Earth. He had to think of a way out of this. One thing he
knew for sure was that he couldn’t let on to anyone, especially
not Timos, that he hadn’t been stupefied.

Jack
had to return to Megan. While he had his chance he grabbed his Lucre
Boxes and shoved them together again. Within minutes he was back in
New Zealand standing outside his house, and he raced towards his
front door. Megan burst out of the house, ran down the path and
flung her arms around him.

“Take
it easy Megs,” Jack soothed, “I’m okay. Everyone
is okay. Let’s go inside and talk.”

Megan
listened intently. Jack did, however, decide to leave out the bit
about the Jovian empire’s ultimate intentions for her clones.

It
was still pretty upsetting to know that her beautiful sisters had
lost all memory of them.

All
those years forgotten,
she
thought.
Now she knew why she’d received such a cold
response from them.

Megan’s
thoughts turned back to the Jovian authorities. “How can they
do that to us, Jack?” she cried, searching his face for
answers, “it’s so unfair! What are we going to do now?”