The Secret War (Jack Blank Adventure)

by Matt Myklusch

  “What are you talking about?” Stendeval asked. “Mid-knight didn’t mention—”

  “Midknight told you everything he knows,” Jack said. “I didn’t tell him everything I know. Obscuro’s not worried about the virus. He’s worried about me. He knows all about Revile and the future. He says the virus is just how we get there.”

  “Jack, that’s fantastic,” Stendeval said.

  Jack’s face contorted. “How is that fantastic?”

  Stendeval raised his hand as if the answer were a given. “It tells us that Obscuro’s concerns about the Rüstov are misplaced,” Stendeval replied. “They’re not based on facts about the viral threat, but rather on irrational fears about one possible future. It tells us the virus is beatable.”

  “What if Revile is more than just a possible future?” Jack asked. “Maybe Obscuro is right and the virus is just one more thing I can’t stop before I lose control.”

  “You’re not losing control, Jack.”

  “Maybe I am. I don’t know,” Jack said. “I should be able to beat this virus, Stendeval. I should be done by now. My powers are way stronger now than back when I started. I know a ton about machines…. I’m even building my own inventions, but I don’t know if I can do this anymore. All of a sudden I’m hearing voices, and I just found out I’m sharing memories with my parasite! That wasn’t the case before I woke it up.” Jack shook his head. “Now Smart comes out with this,” he said, holding up the paper. “I should have just told them about Revile last night. If Smart comes out with that first, it’s going to look like I really am the sleeper agent he always said I was…. It’s gonna look like I kept quiet about the virus because I want to help the Rüstov with their plan.”

  “That’s precisely why you can’t tell anyone about Revile yet,” Stendeval said. “Everything you’re saying right now is true. What’s also true is that you are the single best chance we have of stopping this virus before it’s too late. We can’t afford to lose you, Jack. There’s a reason I kept the truth about Revile hidden so long, even from you. If people find out about your connection to Revile now, in this climate …”

  “But what if Smart tells everyone about me before we can stop the virus?”

  Stendeval shook his head. “People will be scared either way. You need to give yourself every opportunity to finish the cure-code before that happens.”

  Jack nodded. Stendeval was right. He couldn’t go public with his connection to Revile any more than he could with the spyware virus. Jack was just like the Mechas. If people knew the truth, they would think he was dangerous and that he couldn’t control himself, even if it wasn’t his fault.

  “I know this isn’t fair to you,” Stendeval told Jack. “It’s my nature to be mysterious, not yours.” He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Unfortunately, sometimes people aren’t ready for the truth, and we don’t have any choice but to keep it from them.”

  “How do you know when they’re ready?” Jack asked.

  Stendeval put up his hands. “You just know.”

  There was a knock at the door. “That’ll be Trea,” Jack said. “Last night I told her how to get here. She’s going to help me work on the virus today. Which is good, because I don’t know how I’m going to focus on it now. I can hardly bring myself to go into the lab as it is.”

  “Trea won’t be alone,” Stendeval said. “The lady Virtua is coming with her to check on your progress. That’s the other reason I’m here this morning.”

  Jack spun his head around to look at Stendeval. “You told Virtua about the virus?”

  Stendeval nodded. “My fellow Circlemen and I have yet to turn up anything in our search for Glave. I told you earlier, we no longer have the luxury of absolute secrecy.”

  Jack was already opening up the door. Stendeval’s logic made sense, but Jack wished he’d at least given him a heads-up about it. “How did she take it?” he asked.

  The door swung open all the way, and Virtua’s image-caster, Projo, whizzed in. The floating orb projected Virtua’s image into the room next to all three Treas, who followed Projo inside one after the other. The Circle-woman looked down at Jack with a stern face.

  “Not well,” Stendeval said. “Not well.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Lab Partners

  Trea’s supersmart version, T1, looked around at Jack’s filthy laboratory. The old fast-food containers that Allegra had turned her nose up at a day earlier were still there. “Seriously. Gross,” she decided. “This big secret Smart is after …,” T1 said, turning to Jack, “is it the virus you told us about last night, or the fact that you have no sense of smell?”

  T3, Trea’s wild-card self dared to look inside one of the ancient Styrofoam containers, and gagged. “Ughhk!” She was blinking and rubbing her eyes like her retinas were on fire. “Honestly, how do you get any work done down here?”

  “I was just wondering the same thing,” Virtua said, clearly not encouraged by the state of Jack’s lab. “You really have made a mess of things, haven’t you, Jack?” From her tone of voice it was clear she was talking about more than just the mess in Jack’s workshop.

  “I’m working on it,” Jack said. “It’s not easy. I’ve been trying to clean this up all year.”

  “Have you?” Virtua asked. She drifted around the room, looking over the many unfinished side projects and random inventions that were strewn about the lab. There were things like Nuclear Knuckles, Air Grabbers, Magna Lock boots, and more. “Tell me, which one of these wondrous devices is the one that’s going to save my people?”

  Jack grimaced. “None of them,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the cure-code, though. I work on these when I’m blocked or out of ideas.”

  Virtua cast a sideways glance at Projo, who squawked out a sharp beep in reply.

  “I once met a talented puppeteer who said he had no idea where ideas came from, but when he was working well, they simply appeared,” Stendeval told Virtua. “It’s just a matter of figuring out how to receive the ideas that are waiting to be heard.”

  Virtua looked at Stendeval. “What’s your point?” she asked.

  “We’re not here to judge Jack’s creative process … just the results,” Stendeval replied. “You can’t force inspiration. Lightning strikes the earth in its own time.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Virtua replied, clearly in no mood for the old Circleman’s wit and wisdom. “There aren’t any results as far as I can see, and we don’t have time to wait for the thunderbolt to come. We wouldn’t need to force anything if you two hadn’t kept the virus to yourselves. We could have had Empire City’s brightest minds working on a cure all year long.”

  “Right, like Jonas Smart!” the dim-witted T2 said. She was serious, too.

  T1 shook her head, embarrassed by her physically strong but mentally weak side. Jack suppressed a smile. T2 probably didn’t know it, but she’d just done more to justify his silence with four words than he could have done with a two-hour speech.

  “We wanted to cure the virus before we came forward,” Stendeval told Virtua, driving the point home. “I think you know that Empire City’s brightest mind would have used this information to advance a very different agenda.”

  Virtua continued to float around, inspecting the lab and looking cross. “You could have told me at least,” she said. “Both of you.”

  “That would have put you in the position of having to lie about the virus,” Stendeval replied. He shook his head. “I stand by my decision. I wouldn’t have told you anything at all if it weren’t for Glave’s deadline.”

  “It’s not that we didn’t trust you, Virtua,” Jack said, trying to sound a little more apologetic than Stendeval. “It’s just that I couldn’t tell who was infected and who wasn’t. We were worried you couldn’t trust yourselves.”

  Virtua scoffed. “I’ve heard that argument before,” she said.

  Jack was stung by the truth of Virtua’s words. He rea
lly was in the exact same boat as the Mechas. The only difference was that Virtua had publicly backed him up when other people had said the same thing about him.

  “How about now?” T1 asked Jack. “Can you tell who is infected and who isn’t?”

  “Yes and no,” Jack said. “Sometimes I can tell virus code from regular code, but not always. I can recognize a corrupted system if it’s transmitting, though. Transmissions to Rüstov command look like glitches. You don’t have to worry. So far it looks like Circlewoman Virtua is clean.”

  “So far!” Virtua repeated. “Wonderful!” She looked at Projo and shook her head. Her image-caster replied with a series of indignant beeps. “Let me be sure I understand this correctly,” Virtua said to Jack after Projo had finished talking. “The Rüstov have a secret virus that allows them to take control of Mecha systems, and you’ve spent the last year working to stop it.”

  Jack nodded. “That’s right.”

  “And this … this is the secret that convinced Obscuro to turn rogue?” Virtua asked.

  Jack nodded again. It’s one of the secrets, he thought.

  Virtua crossed her arms, her image flickering. “Your progress on the cure-code must be astounding,” she said.

  “Virtua,” Stendeval said. “That is not fair.”

  “It’s okay, Stendeval,” Jack said. More and more he was coming to understand that concepts like fair and unfair didn’t count for much. Virtua probably knew that better than most. “I’m working on a test subject,” he said. “It’s back this way. I’ll show you.” Jack hit a button on the wall behind him, and the wall slid back to reveal another room. In that room was a long metal box on what appeared to be an operating table. “That’s it,” Jack said. “The virus-free prototype.”

  Stendeval, Virtua, and the three Treas followed Jack into the lab’s hidden room.

  “What’s it doing in here?” T1 asked Jack, looking around at the previously concealed portion of Jack’s lab.

  “And why does this room smell even worse than the other one?” T3 added, waving her hand in front of her nose.

  Jack ignored T3’s fussiness. “I have to keep the prototype sealed off until I’m ready to test it,” he said. “I can’t risk it getting contaminated by the spyware virus before then. I don’t know how the virus spreads. I don’t think it’s gone Wi-Fi, but I can’t chance it. The prototype’s safe in there, though. I designed that box myself. No signal gets in or out of the coffin.”

  “The coffin?” Virtua asked.

  “That’s what I call it,” Jack said. “It’s a dead zone. When I’m ready, we’ll open it up, and hopefully the cure-code will work. If not, I’ve got a fail-safe backup just in case.” Jack patted his hand down on a ramshackle contraption with a small satellite dish and a large red button. A strip of masking tape was stuck to the base with the letters EMP written on it in black marker.

  Projo beeped and shot over to the lab door, getting as far away from the fail-safe machine as possible. Projo’s trepidation didn’t go unnoticed by T2. “What does ‘EMP’ stand for?” she asked Jack.

  “Electromagnetic pulse,” T1 answered. “If Jack’s cure-code fails and the test subject is still infected, he can hit that button and fry it.”

  “Fry it?” T3 asked.

  “As in beyond repair,” T1 replied.

  Projo zoomed back in and unleashed another barrage of angry beeps and whirring noises, right in Jack’s face. Jack let him finish, resisting the urge to swat the feisty little Mecha away.

  “Isn’t that it, then?” T2 asked. “Can’t we just light that pulse across the city and fry the virus everywhere, all at once?”

  “What about my people?” Virtua asked. “Do you intend to fry them, too?”

  “This is exactly why I never said anything,” Jack cut in. “This is why I did what I did. I kept it all quiet to protect the Mechas.”

  “Protect us?” Virtua exclaimed. “What you’ve protected is the Rüstov’s secrets. You’ve made me an accomplice to their plans!” she argued. “My circuits! Jonas has been right all this time. We have been letting the Rüstov threat flourish.” Jack had never seen Virtua so upset.

  “If the Mechas are infected, who protects us from them?” T2 asked.

  T1 gave her muscle-brained side a shove. “Stop it,” she said.

  “What did I say?” T2 asked.

  “Just be quiet,” T1 replied. “You’re embarrassing us.”

  “Where do you stand on a cure, Jack?” Virtua asked.

  “I’m close,” Jack said. “But I’m not there yet. That’s why Trea’s here, to help me finish. I didn’t mean to make things worse,” Jack told Virtua. “I was just trying to protect your people from Smart while I worked out a cure.”

  “And yet your decision has left me trapped between two executioners,” Virtua replied. “The Rüstov on one hand, and Jonas Smart on the other. I’m sorry, but I have to leave. I have the answers that I came here for. Now I have a few decisions of my own to make,” Virtua said. “Good day, all of you. Projo, come!” she barked, and blinked out of sight. Projo whipped out of the room and up the stairs, leaving behind only awkward silence and tension.

  “Well, that went great,” Jack said after Virtua was gone.

  “Don’t worry, Jack,” T1 said. “I’m here now, and I haven’t met a computer code I couldn’t hack my way around. Let’s see what you’ve done so far.”

  “We’re going to have to do something about this work space first,” T3 said, looking around at the mess.

  “Don’t mind her,” T2 said to Jack. “T3 is a bit of a neat freak this morning.”

  “Really,” Jack said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Stendeval left Jack and the three Treas to work on the virus. An hour later T1 was still going through Jack’s notes while he waited. T3 passed the time organizing things around the lab, and T2 helped. Jack had expected to start by going over the latest version of his cure-code with the supersmart T1, but she didn’t want to talk to him about that until she was completely caught up on all his earlier work. She buried her nose in Jack’s notebooks, completely ignoring him. That gave Jack plenty of time to think about what had happened to him the last time he’d been working down in his lab. He didn’t like being down there one bit, and just in case his parasite’s awakening hadn’t brought enough stress to the table, now he had Smart’s offer to the Rogue Secreteer to worry about. Every now and then Trea would laugh to herself as she read through his binders, writing in the margins. “Oh, this is all wrong,” she muttered, crossing out entire pages with a red pen. It was absolutely driving Jack up a wall.

  “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. Sm
artPaper 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.