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!”
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.”
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 sitting 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.
“The first thing I’m going to do once you turn is fly out that window and blow up the Calculan fleet,” Khalix told Jack. “If only to show you that the future is exactly what we always said it was.”
Smart looked up from his workstation. The Rüstov prince’s words scrolled across one of Smart’s holo-screens with a slight delay, no doubt due to one of the many cables that were plugged into Jack’s chest at the moment.
“Please, keep talking, Khalix,” Smart said, turning
back to his work. “It makes it that much easier for me to isolate your consciousness inside Jack’s head. It makes it easier to block you out.”
“Nothing’s going to block me,” Khalix replied. “Do whatever you want. It will amount to nothing.”
Smart issued an amused chortle but nothing more.
“Jack’s powers aren’t enough to stop me,” Khalix insisted. “The battle between us is about willpower. His is fading. He grows weaker with every passing second.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jack told Khalix. “My body might be broken, but my will isn’t. I can take you. I know I can.”
“I
will
become Revile. My father will see to that.”
The three Trea’s checked a readout on one of the screens and whispered among themselves, quickly coming to an agreement. They motioned to Jack, telling him to keep Khalix talking. Jack nodded.
“Leaning on Daddy again. Huh, Khalix?” he struggled to say.
Khalix laughed. “By all means, mock me if it makes you feel better. Your pleasure will be short-lived. The simple fact is I am never without my father. No Rüstov is.”
Jack shrugged. “Must be nice. Never having to do anything for yourself, I mean.”
“I don’t expect you to understand the bond we share. How could you? Your own father wants nothing to do with you.”
“Hitting below the belt there, Khalix,” Jack said. “You may not see it, but we’re not all that different when it comes to family.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re not like all the other Rüstov. You
were
without your father . . . for most of your life, in fact. It was the same back there in the throne room, too. You were totally without him, even though he was standing right next to us. He was so busy with Stendeval, he forgot all about you. And you vanished.”
“And your point is?”
“You couldn’t stand up to me without his help. Your father thinks you’re gonna be some invincible super-soldier once you finally put me away. What’s he going to think when we finish up here and shut you down instead? What’s he going to say when there is no Revile, and he’s stuck with just you?”
Jack could practically feel Khalix’s blood boiling. “That’s not how this ends,” the Rüstov prince said. “You know how this ends. You’ve met Revile. You’ve seen the future.”
“One possible future. Your overconfidence is going to be the death of you, Khalix. It makes you lazy. You keep saying the same old thing over and over. Me, I’ve got all kinds of new ideas. And tomorrow’s not going to be anything like what you remember. Not if I can help it.”
“You can’t help it. You can’t. It doesn’t matter where my strength comes from, or my confidence, for that matter. All that matters is that I’m getting stronger and you’re fading away. You’re going to eat those words, Jack. I’m going to set your world on fire and make you watch it burn.”