Accidental Hero (Jack Blank Adventure) (30 page)

The Left-Behinds were quick to react to the sudden activity on the opposite side of the lab. Their leader motioned to the others to head toward the running machine. As one of the decaying Left-Behinds closed in on Jack’s position, Jack got a good look at the “most advanced species in the universe.” Its drying skin was cracking to reveal oily bones and metal. Its rusty iron frame shed dirty orange-brown flakes as it walked. Jack would be doing this thing a favor, he thought. He hit a switch and ran as frozen carbonite poured forth from an overhead storage tank, completely covering the oncoming Left-Behind. This wasn’t the aerosol stuff that Smart had frozen Jack with a few days earlier. This was pure and undiluted. The Left-Behind screeched in pain as its temperature dropped a hundred degrees below absolute zero, and every inch of its body crystallized and froze. Jack threw a piece of lab equipment at the creature and it shattered like glass, sprinkling across the floor in a million pieces.

“Jack, what are you doing?” Jazen yelled. “Get out of here!”

“Not without you!” Jack shouted back.

The other two Left-Behind stalkers came around carefully and shut off the flow of carbonite, but Jack was long gone from the lab station by then. Angered by the loss of their comrade, the Rüstov started throwing Smart’s experiments and inventions this way and that, searching more aggressively for Jack now. The head Left-Behind stormed into the lab’s work area as well and joined the hunt. It was just what Jack was hoping for. Once the coast was clear, he sneaked back out into the open. He went not to Jazen but over to Smart, who was still out cold on the floor. “Don’t worry!” he whispered while going through Smart’s pockets, looking for something. “I’ve got an idea.” Jack reached into Smart’s inside pocket and pulled out his holo-computer. He held it up. “Here!” he said, thinking that if he could shut off the power nullifiers, he could call for help. He could save himself and Jazen. He’d even save Smart.

But when Jack looked up at Jazen, he saw that he was twitching again. Another glitch. Jack knew what that meant now. Jazen was transmitting. The Rüstov could see what he saw, and that meant…

“There you are!” the head Left-Behind said as it grabbed Jack up off the ground. Its two comrades that were still standing were there as well. They had him now.

“NO!” Jazen yelled, struggling to break free. He strained to the point that Jack thought he might blow a fuse, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move.

“Now you see,” the Rüstov said, gloating. “You cannot defeat us when your own bodies betray you. It was you who alerted us to his existence in the first place! It was your eyes that told us there was a child resisting infection in Empire City. Your eyes told us everything.”

“Jack, I’m sorry,” Jazen said. “I’m sorry, I never—” Jazen broke off, his eyes darting down toward the ground. It seemed he couldn’t even look at Jack.

“It’s not your fault, Jazen,” Jack said. “You didn’t know.”

“We knew,” the Rüstov said, taunting Jazen. “And we know that with this boy’s help, the Rüstov Armada will rise again. We are the future.” He held Jack up and looked him right in the face. “Apparently, so are you.”

“Why?” Jack yelled. “Why me? What does this have to do with me?”

“The Magus wants you,” the Rüstov said to him. “That is all you need to know. The Magus will not be denied.”

“Oh, he’ll be denied,” Jazen said, trying with all of his might to break free of the Rüstov’s control. “He’ll be denied!” At this point, Jack noticed that Jazen was able to wiggle his little finger. It was something the Left-Behinds didn’t pick up on. At least not in time to do anything. Jazen let out a mighty roar as he broke free of the Rüstov’s control and rushed them. The Left-Behind holding Jack backed away just in time, but Jazen grabbed hold of the other two and pushed them back. “They underestimate us, Jack!” he yelled at them. “We’re stronger than they think!”

With indomitable willpower Jazen kept going. Jack watched him drive the two Rüstov back to the edge of the broken window and out over the side. He didn’t let go of them for a second.

“JAZEN!” Jack screamed as his best friend tumbled out of the biggest, tallest window in SmartTower. In that instant, everything slowed down. Jack couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He didn’t want to. Even the Left-Behind seemed overwhelmed by what it saw. It stared out the window,
dumbfounded. After a few moments it regained its bearings and dragged Jack off to the elevator, shaking the whole way. It pulled Jack inside, looking much less confident than it had moments ago. It hit the button for the roof deck.

Throughout the elevator ride, Jack remained disconnected from his powers. The elevator was rising. He needed to do something fast, but his mind was elsewhere, stuck on Jazen, and then on something the Left-Behind had said to him. There was something that didn’t fit.

The Left-Behind had said that Jazen had told the Rüstov about Jack. It had said they didn’t know about him or his infection until after they had hacked Jazen’s systems. But Jazen hadn’t known about Jack’s infection until the Hall of Records. It didn’t make any sense.
Someone
had known about Jack before then. The Rüstov had to have known, because they had come after him at St. Barnaby’s! If this Rüstov didn’t know about the one who came after him back at the orphanage… well, who did?

The elevator doors opened and Jack saw Smart’s corporate HyperJet. Still blocked from his powers, Jack had no way of stopping the Left-Behind from forcing him into
the ship and blasting out of there. The Rüstov dragged him out onto the roof.

The sloping spire of the tower peak curved up into the sky. It was still dark when Jack and the Left-Behind arrived on the roof, not yet morning. The flash of light that broke across the horizon was not the rising sun, but a laser blast that connected directly with the Rüstov’s head, vaporizing it instantly. The Left-Behind dropped to its knees and fell forward, dead.

Jack looked up in the direction the blast had come from. There on the roof, hovering in the sky across from Jack, was the very Rüstov he was just wondering about. The one from the orphanage.

Revile the Undying.

Jack looked down at the Left-Behind’s body. Sparks shot out of the spot where its head had been. The shiny new leg it had stolen from Cyberai twitched with lifeless spasms. The rest of it was completely still. It was dead, but Jack was not relieved at all. His situation had gone from worse to apocalyptic.

Revile slowly lowered himself to the roof. He touched down across from Jack, not ten feet away, and walked toward him with the slow, deliberate approach of the grim
reaper. Jack was still exceedingly aware that his powers were not working. He didn’t try to run.

“You’re Revile,” Jack said as the end drew nearer, step by step.

Revile nodded.

Jack got a strange satisfaction out of being right about that. No one had believed him about it, but he was right. He knew that it was Revile who had tried to kill him back in the marshlands outside the orphanage. Now he was back to finish the job. “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

Jack gave a resigned sigh. Sometimes it really stunk to be right.

“I thought the Rüstov wanted me alive,” he said. “For the Magus.”

“That… is why you must die,” Revile said, “so that I will never live.” Jack cocked his head slightly. So
that he will never what?
Revile reached up to his faceplate, gripping it behind the jaw line on each side. Short bursts of air escaped as he depressurized his mask. Revile removed the
faceplate and Jack finally had the answer to the question that had been gnawing at him in the elevator.

Behind Revile’s mask, Jack saw his own face staring back at him. The skin was pale, nearly gray, and a black mark ran all the way around his right eye. Another line started at the inside corner of Revile’s eye and ran down his cheek. It was Jack’s own mirror image. The face was just a few years older, and the resemblance was uncanny. Despite Revile’s adult size and imposing figure, his true face was that of a teenager, and there was no denying it was Jack’s.

“Now do you understand?” Revile asked. His voice without the mask was normal. Human.

Jack shivered at the implications of what he was seeing. “You’re…me?” Jack said.

Revile nodded. “And you are me,” he said.

Revile let the words hang in the air. Jack didn’t need convincing. The truth was written all over the nearly identical face that stared back at him from across the roof.

Jack and Revile looked at each other for a moment without saying a word. They studied each other’s differences, knowing they were the same person. One was the other’s tomorrow, and the other was the one’s yesterday.
One was a six-foot patchwork collection of scrap metal in the shape of a person, and the other was an innocent twelve-year-old boy.

“So long ago,” Revile said to Jack. He looked so sad. “This is where it began,” he said, motioning to the empty roof. “Here. This moment. This is the place in time where you died and I was born.”

“That’s why they tried to take me?” Jack asked. “To turn me into you?”

“That’s why they
took
me,” Revile said, his voice cracking a bit when trying to talk about Jack. “There,” he said, pointing to the getaway ship. “The Left-Behind. That ship.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t stop it.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Jack said. “You were there at the invasion. I was just a baby then. How can I be you?”

“I was present at the invasion with the same mission I have today—to end this,” Revile said. He twitched as if unable to completely control himself. “To end
us
,” he repeated clearly. “Listen to me now. You have a right to know why.

“Everything the Left-Behind told you was true. The
Rüstov
do
win the war. They win because of you, because of us. Because of our ability to resist infection. Our powers made us the perfect specimen for a Rüstov supersoldier experiment, a host body that would never burn out. When I was twelve years old, as you are now, that Left-Behind took me to Rüst, the Rüstov throneworld. There they turned me into what I was destined to become: Revile, the unstoppable regenerating warrior of the Rüstov. Just as you are in control of the parasite now, when I became Revile, the parasite finally took me over. You may think me just a few years older than you, but it is only because the Rüstov’s regenerative technology has stopped my aging. I am much older than I appear. I have killed thousands. I have ruined worlds, wiped out alien races, and subjugated entire planets. Earth was but the first.”

Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“It took years, but I eventually broke free of the Rüstov, just as Jazen did. But by then it was too late. There was so much blood on my hands… I could no longer stand it. There was only one way to make things right. You remember, Smart told us he believed time travel to be possible. That if someone were to dive through the hole he cut in
reality for his TimeScope to look through, they could do more than see through time. They could physically travel through it. Smart had no proof that his theory was right, but I… I was willing to take the chance. And it worked. I went back to the Battle of Empire City. It was too late to save myself, but it wasn’t too late to save the world from me.”

“You came back to kill yourself?” Jack asked.

“My plan was to kill the infant version of myself during the chaos of the invasion,” the future Jack said. “I was blown apart, I don’t know how many times, but I did not waver. I was sure no one would be able to stand up to me, but Legend…Legend did. He and Stendeval, they separated me from the baby. From you. My target was hidden from me, somewhere in Empire City. My only chance to make sure I completed my mission was to annihilate the entire city. The Omega Protocol. That’s when Legend flew me into the mothership’s engine.”

“The Legendary Sacrifice,” Jack said.

“The sacrifice I intended was just as noble,” Revile said. “I was trying to save everyone. They didn’t understand. It took me years to regenerate after that, but as always, I
lived, festering in the grave on Wrekzaw Isle. I survived in the barest informational form—little more than a program running through the dead circuits of the mothership’s wreck. I couldn’t sense your presence anywhere in the Imagine Nation… I lost track of you, and I was foolish enough to hope. For twelve years I laid dormant on Wrekzaw Isle. Then one day it was like a veil was lifted. I saw you. I felt your power, our power, glowing half a world away. I knew then my mission was not yet complete.”

“When I was at St. Barnaby’s,” Jack said. “That’s when you came to kill me. When I blew you up.”

“You thought you defeated me.” Revile shook his head. “After you caused that explosion, I hid. I was going to kill you there in the swamp, but… I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t like dealing with the baby. Looking at your eyes, I saw the boy I was. I hesitated. I decided to wait. To give you a chance. That chance has led us here. I hoped that if I killed the Left-Behind who abducted us, I could finish this without spilling any more innocent blood. But I have failed again. If it had worked, I would have vanished from the timestream. Obviously, I am still here. The Rüstov will not be denied. Eventually, they
will take you. It has to end. We have to end it here.” Revile put his mask back on, hiding away the last vestige of his humanity.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For both of us.”

“Wait!” Jack said as Revile started pressurizing his mask. “You don’t have to do this. We can work together! Can’t we? Maybe now that I know about this, there’s something we can do!”

Revile sealed his mask and primed his wrist cannons.

“You can’t escape it,” he said. “If you could, I would not be here. Understand this, Jack… It has already happened. You are already me. I am still you. Powerful forces conspire against you. There is no escape. You cannot fight the future.”

Jack heard Revile’s wrist cannon power up with a whirr.

“It will be a hero’s death—a death we can be proud of,” Revile said, raising his arm to Jack’s face. The wrist cannon was fully charged and inches from Jack’s nose. There was nowhere to run. Jack braced himself for the inevitable. Twelve years ago, Legend had stopped Revile from completing his mission, but right there on the roof, there was no one left but Jack.