Replication
Page 35
I had trouble hiding my curiosity. “Why is that?”
“Because it was premeditated, Jim. It would have been murder. It’s like a cop going out with the specific intent to shoot a suspect. It’s one thing if it happens in the line of duty, but it’s something else entirely if that was the objective.”
“What everybody keeps forgetting is that I ultimately decided against putting him in the ground. I admit that if I’d seen him within five minutes of what he did to Gramps, I’d still be choking him. But again, the plan changed.”
“So let me ask you something,” she said. “Had everything gone as intended and Jack had slipped into a coma, what was supposed to happen then?”
“Huh?” I mumbled in confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean. The fight would have been over.”
“But Jack would have been in a coma, right?” Electra queried. “What was the plan for getting him medical attention?”
“Wh-what?” I stammered.
“He would have been in a coma, with all his organs shut down. Surely you had a plan for getting him treatment? Perhaps a team of paramedics standing by? Or maybe you’d teleport him to a hospital?”
“Probably teleport him,” I replied sheepishly. “To be honest, I didn’t think much about what would happen after.”
“But you knew your actions would have life-or-death consequences for him,” she said. “And it would have been premeditated.”
I frowned. As I’d told Electra, I really hadn’t considered what would have happened had I been successful during my last encounter with Jack. Without psychoanalyzing myself, there was undeniably a part of me that wanted him dead. But did I subconsciously realize what would happen if he’d gone into a coma and just blocked it out?
“Anyway,” Electra continued, “I’ll repeat my earlier statement and say that I’m glad you failed. I don’t need any more people that I care about locked up for no good reason.”
I simply nodded, knowing without asking that she was talking about her father, Vir. It wasn’t a subject that she generally talked about directly, so I showed my support by slipping my arm around her and giving her a heartfelt hug.
Chapter 88
The amount of time I had available to spend with Electra was short to begin with, and passed in the blink of an eye. We said our goodbyes (with me stealing one last kiss), and then I teleported to Mouse’s lab. When I popped up, my mentor and BT were there waiting on me.
“All set?” I asked.
“Ready when you are,” Mouse replied.
“My clones have everything in position,” BT added, “so we’re good on that front.”
“So, that just leaves one final detail,” Mouse noted. He then held out his hand to me, palm up. In it was a rectangular, wooden box. Mouse then opened the box to reveal a custom-fitted interior lining in which rested a narrow syringe with a barrel about six inches long and a protective cap over the needle. Inside the barrel, I noticed a peculiar, yellow-orange fluid.
“The neural blocker?” I asked as I reached out and gingerly took the box.
“Yeah,” my mentor answered. “It’s based on your synaptic patterns, as indicated by your crown, but – because Jack isn’t an exact clone of you – we attempted to broaden the effective range. Also, it’s geared to activate almost immediately once any form of contact is made.”
“That includes the skin,” BT tacked on, “so don’t get any on you.”
“Understood,” I said.
“Also, bear in mind that there’s no way to test this stuff,” Mouse declared. “You and Jack are the only people it will work on because of your unique synaptic formation, so – short of you volunteering to be a guinea pig – there was no way to determine how effective it will be, such as how long it’s likely to strip you of your powers.”
“Great – just what I always wanted,” I deadpanned as I closed the box. “So the takeaway is basically to be very, very careful with the syringe.”
“That’s the gist of it,” Mouse agreed. “We ready now?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” I answered.
With that, I teleported myself and Mouse to the position he was going to hold while we sprang our trap on Jack. Next, I teleported home and grabbed a jacket from my closet. I didn’t need it for the weather, but for subterfuge. The invisible-item-in-my-hand gag had worked once with the bat, but wasn’t likely to be successful a second time. Keeping that in mind, I needed a place to keep the box holding the syringe until I needed it. The jacket I selected had a deep interior pocket, so I shoved the box in there and zipped the jacket up.
Now fully prepared, I took a moment to mentally prepare myself, and then teleported to the place where Jack had gone to ground.
Chapter 89
I popped up in the living room of my condo. It was a very nice three-bedroom, two-bath unit, but knowing someone had been killed there made it lose a lot of its appeal. Just thinking about it almost made be frown in distaste, but I managed to keep my game face on.
In confirmation of my suspicions, Jack was there, sitting on the sofa.
“We meet again,” he said, giving me a short wave. “Nice detective work in locating me.”
I shrugged. “Wasn’t that hard. You wore a tux to my grandparents’ party with a red bow tie. Gramps gave me that tie when I attended my first formal event a few years ago. He bought it for me, taught me how to tie it. I recognized it immediately. I also remembered that I kept it here.”
Jack grinned. “Yeah, I got the feeling there was something sentimental about that tie as soon as I saw it. Guess I was right.”
“Well, if you like it, keep it.”
He gave me a look of surprise. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, I know how possessive you are.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m serious. Keep it.”
“Thanks,” he intoned softly, almost disbelievingly. “So, I take it you’re here to pick up where we left off this morning.”
“No,” I stated, shaking my head.
“No?” he repeated. It obviously wasn’t the answer he had expected. “Does that finally mean you’re ready to join me?”
“I think I’ve made my position on your proposal very clear.”
“But you don’t even know what I’m offering,” he pleaded. “I can show you the secret.”
I frowned. “What secret?”
“How to get the Bolt Blast!” he exclaimed. “Super strength! It’s an outgrowth of the things the scientists did when they were forcing me to develop powers like yours – something I learned to do. I can show you how to generate any power you want.”
“Does that include telepathy?” I asked casually.
Jack looked taken aback for a moment, but then recovered. “Okay, that was a little below the belt, but I’ll simply respond by modifying my original statement. I can show you how to generate almost any power you want.”
“No thanks,” I said, doing my best to appear to turn him down flat. (In truth, however, I had to admit to being intrigued.)
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “So if you aren’t here to join me or to fight me, why are you here?”
“Once I realized where you were, I remembered that I’d left something important here – something I wanted to keep.”
“What?” Jack inquired. However, he’d barely started forming the word with his mouth when I switched to super speed, dashed into one of the guest bedrooms, then zipped back out again.
“Got it,” I said, shoving my hand into my jacket pocket as Jack watched me, looking befuddled. “Alright, I’m good. You can have this place and everything in it. See you around.”
“Wait!” Jack roared, coming to his feet. “What did you take?”
“Huh?” I asked, giving him a bewildered look.
“What did you take?!” he demanded, looking angry.
“Just something important to me,” I insisted.
“Let me see,” he ordered, holding out his hand.
I looked at his outstretched hand for a moment, then shook my head. “I don�
�t think so.”
“Give it to me!” he bellowed. “Now!”
“Make me,” I said, then phased and went flying through an exterior wall to the outside.
A moment later, concrete, drywall, and various pieces of debris came erupting from the side of the building with a sound like a mortar being fired. It was Jack, of course, crashing through the wall at full speed and coming after me. Smiling to myself, I turned and took off, knowing he’d be right behind me.
*****
My condo wasn’t located too far from downtown, which was where I headed. I zigzagged between a couple of high-rises along the way – evasive maneuvers that Jack would probably expect, but nothing to throw him off my trail. In the meanwhile, as we drew close to the designated spot of our snare, I reached out telepathically to Mouse.
Inwardly, I sighed in relief. Bearing in mind that our plan required coordination, I kept the telepathic channel open between me and my mentor. Glancing back to make sure Jack was still in pursuit (he was), I headed towards my destination: four skyscrapers in close proximity which – when seen from above – could be viewed as forming the corners of a square, and a fifth high-rise that was centered between them.
Mentally I crossed my fingers as I went through our strategy again in my head. In essence, BT’s clones had placed specialized equipment near the roof of each skyscraper forming the corners of the aforementioned “square.” When turned on, they would operate in conjunction to form a giant nullifier around the fifth building that was in the center. My job was to get Jack to the roof of that center building, and then attack him with the syringe containing the neural blocker. Assuming his precognition was effective, he’d see that threat and somehow avoid it. We’d then activate the nullifier equipment (which Jack presumably wouldn’t have seen in his future), and at that point he’d be trapped on the roof without his powers and could be taken into custody at our leisure.
The real trick had been figuring out how to get Jack to the proper location. After tossing around numerous ideas, it had finally come to me that I could possibly use Jack’s own nature against him. He was latching onto the things in my life that had meaning for me: friends, family, and so on. It had then occurred to me that if I took something of significance away from him (or pretended to), he’d be obsessed with getting it back. Surprisingly, it had worked, with me pretending to take something from the condo and Jack now manically pursuing me for it.
I acted instinctively, arcing away with Mouse’s shout ringing in my head just before I reached the outer edge of the region that would be covered by our nullifier.
Somewhat less confident now, I headed back to my original destination (and a quick look over my shoulder confirmed that Jack was still behind me). I felt relief a few moments later as I entered the square to be formed by the nullifier and managed to stay airborne instead of plunging to my death. However, as I angled towards the rooftop of the center high-rise, a shaft of blue light went hurtling by me.
Bolt Blast! I thought. Had Jack tried to hit me? Despite how potent it was, he had to know that the Bolt Blast was the one power he possessed that probably wouldn’t harm me. In short, family members were immune to it – for instance, Paramount’s Bolt Blast had no effect on me. Thus, since Jack was a near-clone of me, it seemed unlikely that he could injure me using that particular weapon.
I was tempted to track the Bolt Blast to see where it hit, but decided it was better to fully focus on the task at hand. (I did note, however, that it appeared to be headed in the direction of one of the buildings, although at this elevation – near the rooftops of skyscrapers – the odds were remote that it would put any lives in danger.) A few seconds later, I landed on the roof of the center building.
The roof of the building was incredibly expansive – tens of thousands of square feet in size, at the very least. It was generally flat, but across its surface was an extensive array of large AC units (each of which was perhaps four feet tall, four feet wide, and ten feet long), along with vents and a couple of satellite antennas. There was also an enclosed structure with a door and windows that I took to be some kind of electrical room. Finally, the south side of the roof was also home to a network of solar panels, which was housed on a metal racking system that rose approximately forty feet in the air. However, I barely had time to take everything in before Jack landed about a dozen yards away from me.
We stood there for a moment, silently facing each other. At this height, the wind was whipping strongly, but neither of us was bothered by the weather. We were like two gunslingers in the Old West, about to face off. (Truth be told, the only thing needed to complete the imagery was having a tumbleweed blow between us.)
“I want whatever it was you took,” Jack said.
“People in the desert want rain,” I responded. “You don’t always get what you want.”
I then reached out telepathically to my mentor, saying,
“Why does it have to be like this?” Jack implored. “Why do you have to be against me? There’s so much we can do together.”
“Like denting the skulls of senior citizens?” I asked sardonically.
His face unexpectedly shifted into a mask of anger. Rising about twenty feet into the air, he said, “You want to be enemies? So be it. But I’ll give you one chance to walk away from here today – just show me what you took.”
I didn’t like having to look up at him. It’s a psychological move, meant to imply superiority. Well, I wasn’t going to play that game.
Rising up to about the same height as Jack, I said, “I’m not showing you anything. There are some things that are personal to me and me alone.”
“Don’t make me take it from you, Jim. It won’t be a pleasant experience for you.”
I was about to tell him that I’d love for him to try when Mouse’s voice sounded in my head.
Here we go, I said to myself.
I gave Jack a solemn look. “Fine. If you’re that interested, I’ll show you.”
I reached into my jacket’s interior pocket and pulled out the wooden case. As expected, Jack began moving towards me, closing the distance between us as he stared at what I held. In my head, I began playing out the upcoming scene: I’d pop open the case, grab the syringe and attempt to inject him. With his clairvoyance, Jack would see the threat coming and avoid it, after which Mouse would turn on the nulli –
My thoughts were cut off as I abruptly dropped like a stone down to the roof of the building, as did Jack. I landed on my side and pain lanced throughout my entire body as the wind was knocked out of me. (Much to my chagrin, Jack seemed to land on his feet.)
Then I realized I’d answered my own question: if the nullifier were on, I wouldn’t have my telepathy. But in that case, why had I fallen? And why wasn’t I able to turn off my pain receptors? (And believe me, I was trying.)
The Bolt Blast! I realized with a start. Jack hadn’t been trying to hit me. He’d been taking aim at the nullifier equipment. For a moment I was worried, as Mouse was actually with the equipment on one of the other buildings. Thankfully, Jack had only fired the one blast (and from all indications, my mentor was okay).
Because of the speed involved in telepathy, the conversation with Mouse only took a few seconds. Needing him to concentrate on the nullifier, I broke the mental connection to my mentor. I then turned towards my doppelganger and saw him bending down to retrieve something. It was the wooden box holding the syringe; I had apparently dropped it when I fell to the roof.
Somewhat panicked, I began trying to rise when I noticed two things. First, Jack turned the box upside down and shook it, but nothing came out. It was empty.
The other thing I noticed was the syringe. It was lying under an AC unit not far from my evil twin. It seemed that when I dropped the box containing it, the syringe had rolled free.
As I struggled to my feet, Jack apparently came to the same conclusion I did regarding the box’s contents, because he bent down, gripped the underside of an AC unit next to him with one hand, and ripped it up from the roof almost effortlessly, bolts and all. My eyes widened as I realized he still had super strength. Fortunately, the syringe was not under the unit in question.
Rethinking his strategy, Jack unexpectedly got down on all fours, peering under the structures near him. Seeing that, I became decidedly more anxious. Assuming he retrieved it, Jack wouldn’t know what the syringe contained, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that it wasn’t anything beneficial. More to the point, if he got his hands on it, I had serious doubts about my ability to take it away from him as long as he had super strength.