The Secret War (Jack Blank Adventure) (19 page)

“What is it?” Jack asked, getting fed up. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll show you later,” T1 said without looking up. “I want to read through everything you’ve already tried so we’re not duplicating efforts here. The good news is, while I’m going over your work, I should be able to correct all your earlier mistakes.”

Jack’s back stiffened. “What makes you so sure I made mistakes?” he asked. “You haven’t even asked me anything about my work.”

“She doesn’t need to,” T3 replied. “She’s supersmart.”

“Thank you, T3.” T1 smiled. “Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll figure this out,” she said. “You can help too, though,” she added, smiling. “Maybe you can get me a drink or something. How’s that?”

Jack frowned. “A drink?” he repeated. “Are you kidding?” He didn’t like what was apparently Trea’s impression of her role in this project, riding in on a white horse to save the day and do what he couldn’t. Jack would have been fine with her finishing the whole thing by herself, but Trea’s attitude, or T1’s attitude, about the whole thing was so irritating. “You and I are the only ones here who know how to do this stuff, and you want me to go get drinks?” Jack asked.

“I’d be further along if this place weren’t so disorganized,” the supersmart Trea replied. “It’s more efficient to use SmartPaper, you know.”

Jack shook his head. SmartPaper was the tangible digital paper invented by Jonas Smart. It was a Hard-Light
Holo projection as thin as regular paper, but each sheet had all the functionality of a laptop computer. “I don’t use any SmartCorp products if I can help it,” Jack told T1. “I don’t trust them.”

The three Treas rolled their eyes at one another. “Someone has trust issues,” T1 said, and then went back to scribbling comments in Jack’s notebooks.

“You do have a lot of secrets,” T3 agreed. “A secret project you work on in a secret box in a secret room?”

T2 shook her head as if she were saying “tsk-tsk-tsk.” “I don’t know how you keep it all straight,” she said. “I couldn’t do it.”

It took Jack a second to decide which Trea he was supposed to answer first. Talking to the three of them at once was never easy. “That room isn’t a secret,” he said to T3. “It’s a dead zone, like the coffin. I have to take the prototype out of the box to work on it, don’t I? I seal off the room first so that I don’t contaminate my work.”

“Jack. Relax,” T1 said. “She was just making an observation. You don’t have to get defensive. Look at him, he’s getting defensive.”

“He is,” T2 said.

“Very defensive,” T3 agreed.

“All right, stop it,” Jack said. The three Treas were giving him a headache. “This isn’t working for me. Can you pull yourself together?” he asked. “It’s really distracting to try and talk to you like this.”

The three Treas looked at one another and shrugged. T1 marked her place in Jack’s notes and closed the binder. “I suppose we could take a little break,” she said.

“Promise me you’ll finish cleaning up this lab after I’m gone,” the ultrafastidious T3 told the others. T1 and T2 agreed to follow through on the cleanup, before zipping back into one, an action that made a sound like air being sucked into a vacuum. Jack was relieved. It was really just Trea’s smart side that he found so grating. That side was arrogant and severe with no social graces whatsoever. It wasn’t an issue when her three sides were combined, but when she was split up … it was no wonder Chi was always preaching balance in her School of Thought lessons. A Trea divided against herself was something Jack could not stand.

Still, Jack couldn’t deny he needed Trea’s help. That
much was obvious as he scanned through what she’d written on his notes, while she went upstairs to get her own drink. The notes she was reading through were from another time, back when Jack had been sure he’d crack the cure-code any day. It seemed like so long ago that he had written them. What little Trea had done that afternoon looked better than what he’d done all month. Maybe T1’s ego wasn’t so misplaced, Jack thought. He couldn’t deny he was burned-out on the project. Maybe a fresh set of eyes was exactly what the job needed.

“What we need is more information about the Rüstov to help us fight this virus,” Trea told Jack when she came back downstairs. “I was wondering, could we study your infection somehow?”

“What, you want to dissect me?” Jack asked, joking around. “I’ve already been down that road with Jonas Smart, you know.”

Trea laughed. “No, nothing like that. I thought it was something you could do. You know, with your powers. Your parasite is a living machine—you could use your powers to try and connect with it. You could learn from it.”

“No,” Jack said instantly. “I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Trea asked. “I haven’t come across anything like that in your notes yet.”

“It wouldn’t be in my notes,” Jack said. “Just forget it, okay, Trea? I don’t want to talk about it. Not my favorite subject, you know?”

Trea furrowed her brow. “This from the guy who doesn’t have a lot of secrets.” Trea paused to gulp down a glowing green energy drink. “Fine. Have it your way, but we’re going to need to get something else to work off of. We need a Rüstov. We need to get a Left-Behind or some other kind of Rüstov tech to compare against all this standard Mecha tech you have.”

“No argument here,” Jack said. “But where are we going to get a Left-Behind?”

“Wrekzaw Isle?” Trea suggested.

“I’m not going back there,” Jack said. That was where he’d left Revile, burning in the heart of an Infinite Warp Core engine. His future self was still there, melting and reforming, over and over. Jack didn’t want to chance running into him again. For all Jack knew, showing up on
Wrekzaw with his recently revitalized parasite might just inspire Revile to work harder on finding a way out.

“Where else are we going to look?” Trea asked.

Jack rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. “Smart used to have pieces of Left-Behinds all over his lab, but that’s no good either,” he said. “He’d never share that stuff with me, and I’m not about to break back into SmartTower to get at it. Even if I wanted to, these days he’s got power nullifiers all over that building. My powers cut out every time I walk past the place.”

“It’s too bad we can’t work with Smart,” Trea said. “I don’t like him any more than you do, but you have to admit he
is
brilliant. He’s forgotten more about chasing down the Rüstov than you or I will ever know. If we were able to join forces with him, I’m sure we’d figure this out. We’d at least have access to the data we need for our work.”

“We can’t trust Smart with our work,” Jack replied. “You know what he’d do with this information just as well as I do. His priority wouldn’t be solving the problem. It would be solving
his
problem of how to get back on top. It’s not an option, Trea.”

“Jack, I’m not suggesting—”

“And another thing,” Jack interrupted, pointing a finger at Trea. “I don’t trust this SmarterNet he’s using to ‘chase down the Rüstov.’ I mean, really, what does it do? Why won’t he say? How come no one’s asking about that? Smart’s got his secrets just like everyone else, you can count on it. He’s just better at hiding them than I am.”

Trea shook her head, not even trying to argue with Jack about Smart. “If you would stop for a second and
listen
,” she told Jack, “you’d realize I’m not talking about actually working with Smart. I’m just saying it’s too bad we can’t. It’s a wasted opportunity, that’s all I’m saying. I’m not foolish enough to expect a fair shake from a man who kidnapped Mechas and kept them in a secret prison.”

“Secret prison?” Jack repeated as an idea that was stuck all the way in the back of his brain suddenly screamed out for attention. “Trea, that’s it!” he said. “That’s where we’ll find our Left-Behind!”

“What are you talking about?” Trea asked. “Smart’s secret prison? Jack, they call it that for a reason. No one knows where it is.”

“I think I might,” Jack said with growing enthusiasm. “Yeah, I think I’ve got a pretty good idea, actually.” Jack fired up a holo-screen on one of his computers and started scrolling through maps of the Imagine Nation until he found what he was looking for. “There,” he said. “There’s gotta be something out there for us. Smart must have had some Rüstov locked up in that prison too. It can’t have been
all
Mechas, right?” Jack asked.

Trea put her hands up. “How should I know? If you really think you know where it is, let’s go find out. How are we getting there?”

“Not we,” Jack told Trea. “Me. You gotta split back up and keep working on those notes. We’ve gotta work this from a couple different angles.”

“Jack, I’m not staying here while you run off looking for some abandoned prison on your own. What if you find it and there
are
Rüstov in there? Real, live, hostile Rüstov? You can’t go in there alone.”

“I won’t,” Jack told Trea. “I’m never alone.”

“Right,” Trea said. “You, Skerren, and Allegra … you’re like the Three Musketeers, aren’t you?”

Jack looked over at the operating table where he’d tried reaching out to his parasite a week ago. “Yeah,” he replied. “That’s it. I’ll take Skerren and Allegra with me.” Although that wasn’t what he had originally meant at all.

By lunchtime Jack, Skerren, and Allegra were speeding across the plains of the Imagine Nation on Allegra’s open AirSkimmer. The flying raft moved almost twice as fast as Hypnova’s ship and got them to their destination in nearly half the time. It wasn’t long before Jack looked down over the railing and saw mist-covered treetops spread out far and wide. They were back in the skies over Gravenmurk Glen.

“That way,” Jack said, pointing toward the back end of the woods and the cliffs on the island’s north face.
Homing in on the machine signal he’d picked up in the cave the night before, Jack was leading the group back to the same place where Obscuro had escaped, and possibly somewhere new as well: Jonas Smart’s secret prison.

“You don’t think he’ll still be there, do you?” Allegra asked.

“Who, Obscuro?” Jack said. “No. He hasn’t stayed hidden this long by being careless. Even if he was using that cave as a hideout instead of just an escape route, he would have had to abandon it after last night.”

“You and Obscuro really just talked about your father last night?” Skerren asked. “That’s all?”

Jack cleared his throat and looked out over the railing. This was the second time Skerren was asking him that. “Pretty much,” he said.

“Pretty much?” Skerren pressed. “What does that mean?”

Jack turned to face his friend. “Where’s this coming from, Skerren? You don’t trust me anymore? Don’t tell me Smart’s ads are getting to you already.”

Skerren shrugged. “It’s not just that,” he replied. “There’s that Glave message about ‘the Lost Boy’ that went
out this morning too. You can’t blame me for being a little suspicious. You have been lying to us all for a year now.”

“I never lied to you guys,” Jack said. “I just didn’t tell you everything.”

“What’s the difference?” Skerren asked.

“There’s a big difference,” Jack claimed.

Skerren’s eyes narrowed, examining Jack like he was trying to spot something out of place. “Just tell me,” he said. “Is this it? Is this the only secret you were keeping from us?”

Jack could feel Skerren’s righteous eyes boring into his head like lasers. He didn’t want to lie, but everything Stendeval had said earlier that morning was still true. Jonas Smart’s news machine was reawakening people’s old fears about him. Jack couldn’t tell anyone the whole story just yet. Not even his friends.

“Give it a rest, Skerren,” Allegra said. “Jack wouldn’t keep anything else from us now. Glave’s attack deadline is too close to take any chances.”

“Thanks, Allegra,” Jack said. “I appreciate that.” Allegra nodded like it was no big deal. Jack cleared his throat again and walked to the front of the AirSkimmer.
“We’re here, guys. Bring us down over there, Allegra. Just past the clearing in the trees up ahead.”

“I see it,” Allegra said. “Here we go, boys. And, Skerren?” she said, turning her head. “Try not to cut any trees down this time around.”

Allegra landed the ship on the ridge overlooking the river. They’d have to walk from there. The woods looked a lot less scary in the daytime. The fact that a horde of Gravens wasn’t trying to drag Jack and his friends down into the earth didn’t hurt, either. As Jack led Skerren and Allegra back to the spot where Obscuro had vanished, he also walked them through the theory that brought them back to Gravenmurk Glen in the first place.

“When Trea mentioned the secret prison this morning, it all clicked,” Jack explained as he followed the river through the woods. “It got me thinking about how when Obscuro got away, I felt something funny in that cave he ducked into. Machine signals. They came out of nowhere, like someone just flipped a switch. We were in the middle of the forest with no machines anywhere, so at first I thought it was just the
Knightwing
pulling in overhead.”

“How do you know it wasn’t the
Knightwing
?” Skerren asked.

“Because I should have felt that ship coming half a mile away,” Jack replied. “I think someone
did
flip a switch. There’s no way I would have missed it otherwise.”

“You really think someone was using power nullifiers out here that night?” Allegra asked Jack.

“Not just anyone,” Jack said. “Smart. Trust me, I’ve been hit with those things enough times to know. I didn’t put it together at the time because I was still in shock over what Obscuro said about my father, but it felt just like it does when I walk past SmartTower. My powers cut out, and then they come flooding back later, when I get far enough away. Smart puts those nullifiers on all his stuff nowadays…. He’d definitely put them on his secret prison.”

“Here’s the part I don’t get,” Skerren said. “You think Obscuro escaped through there, but stopped to shut off the power nullifiers on his way out? Why would he do that?”

“Don’t ask me,” Jack replied. “Maybe it was an accident. He could’ve been trying to turn on a light, for all I know. Or maybe they just shorted out. We’ll have to see.”