Free Jack Blank and the End of Infinity by Matt Myklusch

scared, but it was downright invincible when she wasn’t. On the other hand, Skerren could cut through anythingwith his swords as long as his heart was in it. They had clashed once before and Allegra came out victorious. Jack didn’t want to find out whose will was stronger at the moment.
    “Skerren, we don’t have time to fight each other,” Jack said, trying to reason with his former friend. “The Rüstov are coming. We need to get ready, and you need my help to defeat them.”
    Skerren scoffed at Jack’s claims. “Don’t even try that with me. You’re more one of them now than you are one of us . . . if you ever were one of us. I won’t be fooled by you again.”
    “Skerren, he stopped the Rüstov’s spyware virus,” Allegra said. “You saw him do it. We did it together!”
    “So you say,” Skerren shot back. “How do I know if he left any codes hidden in those machines?” He pointed a sword at Jack. “We don’t trust any machines in Varagog, and you’re as much a machine as you are a person now. Even if we did trust you, we couldn’t let you in on our plans. The son of the Magus hears every word you say.” Skerren spun his swords around and held them out in attack positions. “No more!” He ran at Jack and Allegra.
    Allegra morphed one arm into a shield and the other into a sword to match Skerren’s, but before the two clashed, a throng of WarHawks and Varagog knights forced Jazen and Blue back into both of them. The swarm of combatants all collided with one another, and Jack went flying down a flight of marble steps, taking several Varagoggers with him in a tangled mess of bodies.
    When Jack got up, he felt no great pain beyond a few new bumps and bruises. That was especially odd, because a large knife had been plunged into his chest during the fall.
    Jack breathed in a huge gulp of air, nearly choking at the sight of his wound. He tugged at his already ripped shirt to find that the blade had been stabbed deep into the mechanical implant in his sternum. Black oil spurted out around the hilt of the dagger, right next to the glowing Rüstov power core in his chest. Jack shut his eyes tight and quickly pulled out the knife before he lost his nerve. The cybernetic implant, which had been damaged by the blade, instantly began to repair itself.
    “It’s working,” Khalix said. “Jack! The Revile process . . . it’s working! Stop fighting it. Join us. Join me, and these people will never be able to hurt you again.”
    As Jack listened to Khalix’s voice in his head, he began to worry that Skerren might have had a point after all. Maybe he really was becoming more Rüstov than human. The machinery in Jack’s chest was foreign and unfriendly. He had never seen its like before. He didn’t understand it and it wasn’t talking to him. Jack felt at the groove Skerren’s sword had carved into the thick red glass that covered his power core. Unlike the damage to the core’s metal casing, the cut in the glass didn’t heal itself. Jack was busy wondering why as the WarHawks came galloping down the staircase to kill him. He noticed them a second too late, but just before they got to him, a glowing Chinese dragon flew over Jack’s head. Its rider grabbed him by the collar.
    Solomon Roka pulled Jack up and slid back on the dragon’s saddle to make room for him. “Hey, Jack. How’s this for a way out?”
    Jack held on tight and looked over both shoulders as his former School of Thought classmates Zhi and Trea flew past him on four more of the mystical Chinese dragons that Zhi controlled. Trea had used her powers to split into three separate versions of herself and was riding threeof Zhi’s dragons. Lorem Ipsum, the talented and dangerous “daughter” of Jonas Smart, flew up alongside him, riding a fifth.
    “So, Jack. How’s your first day back going?” Lorem asked Jack.
    Jack smirked as Trea and Zhi circled back, whipping their dragons’ tails into Smart’s battle droids and clearing