The soldiers stopped and took aim when the Tanakee did the trick again, then again, ten becoming twenty, twenty becoming forty, until the little creatures outnumbered their foes by at least ten to one. Guns pointed, the soldiers showed no fear at the sudden disadvantage. Instead, they crouched calmly, coolly, triggering their weapons and sending something other than bullets at the tiny creatures. Right away, Jack knew they couldn’t have been normal rounds. They were electric pulses, bluish and bright, with large arcs that bent and twisted toward their targets.
When the arcs hit their targets, each Tanakee reverted back to the original. The dimensional duplicates disappeared, all of them, leaving the Tanakee on their own, just the five of them once again. No backup. No help from Eteea.
Takota appeared shocked. But more than that, he looked scared. More blinding bursts from the soldiers’ guns forced the Tanakee to use conventional evasive tactics. They sped through the men’s legs, scattering in different directions, and leading the soldiers on what could only be described as a giant wild goose chase.
Jack imagined himself in the middle of the pack, next to his protector, and was there abruptly, standing in the grass, using his force field against the incoming streams of electrical power.
“What’re you doing!” Takota flinched at his sudden arrival. “Get away from here!”
“I came to help protect you!” Jack said.
“I protect you, remember?”
“Yeah?” the O/A absorbed a dozen pulses all at once. “You look like you’re doing a bang-up job!”
Takota stared up at him, almost annoyed. “You just worry about him!” he pointed past Jack at the boy with the suspicious machine. “We’ll take care of these guys!”
That’s when Jack felt a jarring blow from behind. It was an intense bolt of energy, the strongest he’d felt from the strange kid yet, and it slammed into Jack’s force field, moving both him and Takota several feet forward. Jack spun to see a menacing smile and an amber reflection in a lustrous visor. Jack gritted his teeth and tightened his stomach, imagining himself in the air, a projectile, aiming straight for the enigmatic boy.
Speed. Unrivaled by anyone and anything in the known universe. He would hit his mark. He knew he would. Then he’d get to the heart of this mystery, unmask the intruder, and end this brief but effective reign of confusion and terror. But, at the last millisecond, just before impact, the stranger flickered out of sight. Gone instantly.
Jack had to think fast and slow his incredible momentum before he leveled several acres of forest. It only took a second, though, and then the villainous kid returned from nowhere, just above Jack’s position. Jack’s fury began to build when he heard laughter.
“Are you laughing at me!” he imagined himself next to the boy, and, instantly, his thought became reality. Face-to-face for just a second. Not long enough to do anything. The kid was quick, and he blinked away. Jack was quick too. He took flight immediately, and met him at the treetops.
“Whatever you’re trying to do, we’ll stop you!” he told the kid, staring at his own likeness in the mirrored eyeshade.
The kid popped out of sight again, this time reappearing inches from Takota, plucking the little guy off the ground and shooting like a missile deep into the woods. Jack didn’t have to think. The O/A, reading Jack’s instinctual reaction, sped away with him in its transparent shield, the evergreens nothing but a blurry backdrop.
Leaving his mom, sister, and Amelia behind wasn’t the most desirable course of action. No way would he lose his friend, his protector. That tiny creature had saved Jack so many times he couldn’t count. Now, Jack had to return the favor.
The other kid moved fast, swooshing left and swishing right, skimming past tree after tree after tree. Jack saw Takota, swinging from one arm, kicking and biting. But the kid had enough strength to hold on, and the body armor seemed to be repelling any effects from the little creature’s attacks. Steadily, Jack inched closer. They raced at breakneck speeds. A fierce competition in ultra-fast motion. Hugging the treetops. Diving below the canopy to within only inches from the ground. Birds and bullfrogs and even larger animals like deer and elk scurried out of the way as Jack and the kid became two electric locomotives charging through the brush.
The kid looked back, noticing how near Jack had gotten. Then, just before Jack pulled even, the kid dropped Takota and twisted up, up, up—over the trees, into the clouds.
Jack had two choices: help Takota, or capture the villain. In the end, it wasn’t even close. Jack plucked his tiny, furry friend from his spinning descent.
“What are you doing!” Takota protested. “I’m fine! Why’d you go after me!”
“I had to!” Jack panted. He touched his feet on the ground. The O/A’s power source, the Gravitomiton, whirred to silence and the dimensional power departed, making him feel queasily rundown. “He dropped you!”
“That’s not what I meant,” Takota wiped off the dust. “I meant why did you chase after us in the first place? You left everybody! No telling what kind of danger they’re all in right now!”
Jack was perplexed. “But…but…”
“I told you a long time ago, Jack,” Takota continued the lecture. “If you ever get into a situation where it looks like I’m in trouble, you’re not supposed to come after me. Remember? You promised.”
Jack dropped his shoulders.
“I remember. I just couldn’t do it, though. Everything went so fast, and when I saw him take you, I panicked. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not sure if sorry will cut it this time,” Takota closed his eyes and lowered his head, the signal to Jack he was readying to make a dimensional jump. “Come on. Let’s go back and help them.”
He vanished in a ripple of light and a crack of thunder. Jack still was amazed at the Tanakee’s Eteea abilities. To make such a jump without a machine. Incredible.
Jack energized the O/A and traveled through the dimensions to Teresa’s house. He was aghast at what he saw. His stomach went crazy with butterflies. His knees became rubber. In the place where the majestic cottage had stood, once again, was a massive pile of rubble. Jack caught the most acute sense of deja vu staring at the broken glass, the toppled stone chimneys, the cracked and splintered timbers. And, again, books, strewn here, there, everywhere.
“What…what…” he stuttered. Takota also seemed at a loss for words.
The two circled the heap that once was Teresa’s house, then decided to launch a recovery effort. Jack fired up the O/A and used his formidable power to lift the larger items. A support beam that had fractured in two. Stone block after stone block. Takota crept in the small places, the gaps and crannies and passages through the rubble, each time going in with a hopeful expression and each time coming out looking sullen and dejected.
After what seemed forever—searching, digging, calling for survivors—Jack glanced at Takota and they both sighed. Then Jack heard something. They both listened intently. A voice, but it wasn’t coming from in the debris at all.
“You won’t find anyone in there!” Teresa yelled from up high in a walnut tree. “They’re gone!”
“Teresa!” Jack shouted, and, with the O/A, hovered instantly in the air next to her. Without much effort, he removed her from the tree and brought her down to safety. “What were you doing up there?”
“I don’t know,” she wiped the sap from her gown. “Must have been the explosion.”
“Explosion! What explosion!” Takota was anxious.
“Which one do you think?” Teresa answered curtly. “The one that destroyed my house…again! Just look at this place, would you! I can’t believe this, my house, in pieces yet again! And this is the second time this month! Oh, this really gets my goat!”
“Can’t you just rebuild like you did before?” asked Jack. “Where’s that storybook?”
She waved her hand in disgust.
“Of course. But it gets to be a hassle, that’s all,” she huffed. “An old lady can’t be expected to do this al
l the time, you know?”
“What about the others?” Takota pressed. “Where are they?”
Teresa alternated her serious eyes between Jack and Takota.
“They took ‘em.”
“Where?” Jack pleaded. “Where did they take them, Teresa?”
She shook her head.
“I have no idea. Why don’t you use the O/A to find out?”
“That seems to be out of the question lately,” Jack said. “For some reason, I can’t find anybody. It’s like whoever has them has cast some sort of shroud over them.”
“Not only that,” Takota said. “It looks like they have technology similar to yours, Jack.”
“I know. What’s with that?”
They looked at Teresa. She shrugged innocently.
“This was never a part of what I was told,” she admitted. “I have no clue who these people are. But whoever they are, they’re powerful.”
“There has to be a way to find them,” Takota said, and it sparked an idea in Jack.
“Wait a second. Maybe there is,” he pressed the O/A. It came alive with light and sound, infusing him with power. “I think I saw something when I was chasing that…that kid, whoever it was.”
A purplish-blue, shimmering sphere grew from the ground up, surrounding Jack as he spoke.
“Come on, Takota.”
“Where are we going?”
“That kid’s power source—it left a trail. I might be able to follow it.”
They said goodbye to Teresa, leaving her to rebuild her house yet again. Then Jack and Takota, in the O/A’s protective sphere, retraced the path they’d taken earlier while chasing the mystery kid. Sure as Jack thought, he found a signature left behind, an invisible stream of highly-pressurized air, like a trail of breadcrumbs. Jack was certain it would lead to the culprit. Further and further they traveled, through deep forest to the shoreline until the trail veered inland again. They followed carefully, watching, tracking like bloodhounds. Finally, after tracing the pressure trail to a large rocky peak in some snowy coastal mountains, it went cold.
Jack and Takota stopped in midair, suspended hundreds of feet up, staring at the mountainside.
“What is it?” asked Takota.
“The pressure stream. It just ends. Right here. It doesn’t make sense.”
They both fell silent for a moment with the O/A’s energy field humming around them. Then Jack took them down, to a rocky ledge on the side of the steep hill, a shelf built seemingly for just the two of them.
“It’s like the trail goes directly into this rock,” he let the O/A power down, wanting to think without the constant constraints of a quadrillion minds chattering all at once inside his head. Deep in contemplation, he noticed Takota stiffen, and then look up.
“Jack! Look out!”
Jack snapped his sights to the sky. There, he saw something that made him jittery with nerves—the strange kid, with the device, closing in fast. Takota vanished and reappeared in front of the speeding kid, trying to block access to Jack. A futile attempt. The kid was too fast. Takota didn’t get there in time, and a glancing blow sent the little fellow spinning, leaving nothing between the two adversaries.
Jack didn’t remember getting hit. He only remembered Takota screaming. He did remember one more thing. Just as he fell to his knees and passed out, he saw his machine, the O/A, slip from his grasp and tumble to the rocks below. One, two, three bounces and it kept going as Jack faded to obscurity.
FIFTEEN
“JACK!”
The voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere all at once. He wanted to get his machine and turn it on and fly the heck out of there. He wanted to get that stupid kid—whoever it was—by the neck and take off that mask. He wanted to stop those menacing people who seemed to be perpetually after him and Takota. After their chance meeting back at the supermarket those weeks ago, his whole world had spun out of control, and he wanted to make it right. He knew he could. He just had to get his hands on his machine. Where was it? Where was the O/A?
“Can you hear me, Jack?”
He tried to pinpoint the source of the voice. He was lost, floating in some murky mixture he’d never experienced before and it frightened him. The darkness. The nothingness. Wincing and rolling his head, he felt a sudden aching down his side.
“Be careful with him,” an unfamiliar male voice said. “He’s been through a lot today.”
“I should say so,” he heard someone he knew. A woman. “You guys were pretty rough with him. With all of us. Did you have to be so rough?”
The man said something, but Jack had become too fixated on the woman’s voice to care. As his senses gelled, he wanted to smack himself for not realizing it sooner. That voice.
“Jack! Snap out of it!” someone shook his shoulders lightly and, suddenly, he was no longer trapped in the endless void. He saw light, and willed himself toward it immediately. Falling up, twisting, toppling, reaching for his salvation.
“Mom!” his throat was sandpaper. He tried to sit up. His mother, still a hazy glow in the bright lights, eased him to his pillow again.
“Easy, baby,” she whispered, then turned to someone he couldn’t see beyond the luminescent shroud. “Look what you did!” she raised her voice, and her tone changed sharply. “You call yourselves friends?”
Jack saw a silhouette behind Liz.
“You don’t understand. We had to be quick and covert with your extraction. That’s the only way we could get you out safely. Otherwise the Nagas would’ve been able to track you. This way, you’re safe with the Eteeans.”
“Safe!” Liz came unglued. “You call this safe? Look at what you did to my son!”
“He’ll be fine. Though our extraction methods were a bit…rough, the True Soul didn’t harm him. His Eteea machine was only set to knock Jack unconscious. It was for his own good.”
“Wait a minute,” finally Jack had enough strength to sit up. This time his mother didn’t try stopping him. The place looked like a hospital room on steroids. Tons of life-saving, life-sustaining apparatuses. Shelves and shelves of medicines and sterile instruments and first aid items. Though, by the dark and polished walls and the jagged obsidian ceiling, it wasn’t any sort of hospital he’d ever seen. He tried to focus on the mysterious man his mom was speaking to. “True Soul? Eteeans? What are you talking about?”
His questions fell on deaf ears. Neither his mom nor the man in the shadows said a word. Then Liz bent and wrapped him in a hug. She squeezed tight, but not too tight, showing she understood he was still sore from his encounter with the powerful stranger.
“Oh, Jack!” she said. “I love you so much. No matter what, I’ll always be proud of you.”
“What do you mean?” he pushed away from her. “Mom, what is this man talking about?”
Again, silence. Jack felt his old friends, the stomach butterflies, make an encore appearance, flittering so hard he nearly vomited. He searched his mother’s eyes, then studied the man’s features as they became more and more clear and his vision adjusted. The man wore a military uniform, adding fury to his butterflies. Jack was familiar with the insignia, and knew the man was in the Navy. He also recognized the star and stripes on his sleeves. A commander.
“Would someone tell me what the heck is going on!” he demanded. “Where’s Takota? Where’s the O/A? What’s happening?”
“Jack?”
He found a comforting face—Amelia. She’d been standing beside him the whole time, stroking his hair.
“Amelia,” he begged. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed deeply, staring into his eyes, but said nothing.
“What!” he became more insistent, turning to his mom, the commander, to Amelia again. They remained silent, faces like statues.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Amelia said finally. “It’ll still be okay.”
“What will?” he shouted. “What’ll be okay? Why are you sorry?”
A brilliant blue flash robbed Jack’
s attention. He tried to get out of bed, but was held back by the intravenous lines and tubes stuck into him. Then he heard something that filled him with both elation and dread.
“DUCK SOUP!”
“DAD!” Jack sprang from the bed, ripping the tubes from his wrists and chest and shoulders. His mom called for him. Amelia called for him. Even the commander, whose identity he still didn’t know, called for him. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. His one and only thought was to locate his father. Ben would have some answers.
He sprinted to the door, and it opened unlike any door he’d ever seen. A shimmering membrane peeled away from the center and he didn’t so much walk through than pass through as if by osmosis. It gave him the strangest sensation, but the weirdness didn’t stop there. Once in the hall, he noticed the place was built of some sort of space-age metal. It was perfectly black, yet had a luminance to it, making traditional overhead lighting unnecessary.
The walls had no windows whatsoever, with rounded passages and arched ceilings. No straight line in sight. In fact, he saw nothing but bright hallway to the left and right. And he heard his father’s giggles. One thing set his mind at ease, and that was Ben sounded in good spirits. But what was he up to? It made Jack mad with curiosity.
“Jack! Wait!”
He didn’t respond. For some reason, he felt they had something to hide, and were concealing it well.
Rounding a long, curved corridor, he found an intersecting hallway. There he took a left, following the unmistakable sound of Ben James and his uninhibited emotions. Not far past the hallway juncture, Jack came upon another series of those same strange doors, entrances to more chambers, each filled with so much glowing, futuristic machinery it all seemed a dream. Jack saw devices that took him back to his father’s lab in their garage. A holographic computer monitor, then another, and another. Soon, Jack started to get the feeling the place was in fact his dad’s lab, only a hundred times bigger.
Jack James and the Call of the Tanakee Page 11