"Get up, kid."
I open my eyes to see Jakkar standing above me. I recoil in response, getting to my feet and assuming a fighting stance. "Get the fuck away from me!"
Jakkar sighs, looking at me with visible annoyance. "I saved your life boy, don't make me regret it."
I finally notice the hum of the HoloJet engines and realize we're in the air. "So you know how to fly now?"
"There's a lot of things you don't know about me, Jason. Hell, I didn't know much about myself or what's going on until recently. This little adventure answered decades old questions for me." Jakkar leans against the nuke, arms crossed. "And I know you want answers too."
My mind is fried. But I'm tired and frustrated, and this asshole saved me from the Q monster and everything I know is thrown out the window at this point, so I gave up and sat on the floor of the hold, and listened to Jakkar's story.
* * *
Nathan planned the hit, but It didn't go down how it was supposed to.
I infiltrated the ranks onf the fighting force that pushed past the Tenth Kingdom borders. As we entered the city, I killed our driver, and along with five of my 'terrorist' buddies, detached from our unit and intercepted the truck transporting the nuke. We took out the crew and unloaded the device. But there was a problem.
The device had a special ignition panel attached to the bomb, that could only be accessed by a DNA key. If the proper key wasn't used, then the bomb was basically just a giant piece of metal. Harmless. My men looked to me for direction, and after thinking through our options, I said we should evacuate. But at that moment, a gunshot fired down the street, a single bullet from a high caliber rifle taking down two of my men.
The shots rained down, getting closer and closer, as if the assailant was on foot. When it was down to just two of my men and I, a man leaped over the hood of a car parked along the street, and tossed a grenade at our feet. I dove behind the armored truck, both my men getting caught in the blast. As I was getting my bearings, I circled around the back, trying to flank the guy, but he was quick. He was already in the back of the truck, hand pressed agaisnt the panel. The lights on the nuke went from orange to blue, and the timer ticked down. The man turned and saw me, running towards me gun raised.
We fought, the guy clearly trained. But I pulled a knife and slashed open his chest. He fled, trailing blood down an alley. I was going to follow but a live nuked was ten feet away, so I ran west, towards the outer villages where I blended in and escaped the kingdom.
I never forgot that night. And the man that actually destroyed the tenth kingdom.
The man in the coat, with a hat that covered his face.
* * *
The coat. The hat. It couldn't be.
"You didn't set off the nuke?"
Jakkar shakes his head. "No. We were attacked, weren't you listening?"
"But. . . I just don't-"
"Apparently," Jakkar cuts in, "We weren't the only ones after that nuke. And I didn't learn until nearly a year later who planned the second hit."
"Who?"
Jakka sighs. "My girlfriend, Miranda Galdinn."
At this point, I didn't know what to believe.
"It wasn't until after the explosion that I realized how stupid I was, thinking the nuke would avenge my parents death. So I went after the true bad guys: the people who ran the lab experiments. I tracked them down, but Miranda found out and I confessed." He sighs. "I loved her so much. I thought being honest would help, but I realized she wasn't who I thought either. She threatened to turn Nathan and I in, and escaped with our newborn child, our son. I called Nathan as I followed her out of the kingdom by subway, Holotrams weren't installed yet. He said to not let her go, the damage to his career, blah blah. So I tracked her down to a small city in the Third Kingdom. I cornered her, told her to listen, told her I was sorry. She stopped in the middle of the street, at the time I didn't notice she wasnt carrying our son. And thats where she told me everything. That her parents led the experiments that killed mine, thats why she developed the nuke. But shes the one who ordered the second hit. She wanted the nuke to detonate because she believed that was why her parents developed the technology in the first place, mixed with some neo religious bullshit. The man in the coat was her accomplice."
"At this point, I thought she went fucking mental. She was smiling like a phsycopath, and spilling everything, meanwhile tears were streaming down her face. She told me about the second nuke, how "if the man in the coat did his fucking job, the second nuke would've killed all the Tenth Kingdomers." Finally, she rambled something about her partner carrying out her Father's wishes, and then it happened."
"I didn't see the train. It was a HoloTram prototype, nearly silent. Looking back, the signs and lights never flashed. The bars didn't come down to warn us. At the time I thought it was just a glitch but, I don't know anymore. She was dead."
"What she said stuck with me. And I figured out what she meant in her lunatic end. Her partner, the man in the coat, was going to carry out her plan, and todo that, he would use the second nuke. I didn't know who he was, but I was a mercenary, and finding and killing people was something I was good at. I tracked down all the survivors, taking out the ones who fit his profile. I had to make sure. I admit, maybe the trauma of losing my whole family, my plans for a future destroyed, got to me."
I can't speak. I'm light headed, hands shaking. I don't want to believe it.
Q never mentioned my mother's first name, but it was clearly her. She could've changed her surname upon leaving the Tenth Kingdom.
Galdinn. Landing.
Same letters.
I looked at Jakkar. "You're my... my.."
"Your what?"
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the tears threatening to come. Out of everyone, literally everyone, my father is the one person I've hated my entire life, the one who killed Sister Melani, who killed. . .
I look up at him. "Did you send a troop to the bunch of skyscrapers just northeast of here? The ones on the edge of the fallout zone?"
Jakkar shakes his head. "All my men have stayed on the military base since we got there. Why?"
The smallest, most microscopic glimmer of hope emerged from the pit in my stomach. I retreated to my thoughts.
Q just needed me to arm the nuke, either because the software reset and his DNA was no longer able to activate the bomb, or because his DNA was far too mutated to be readable. Either way, he needed me, that's why he started me on this path all those years ago, just so I could make it here. But if he really did kill my friends, why didn't he just show me? I read his face, he wasn't lying, but I can't trust that. I shouldn't have trusted just a look then either, but I wasn't myself. Maybe he believed they were as good as dead. In that case, where did he put them? Between the time we were driving and the time I was knocked out, he couldn't have hid them far away.
I thought back to that moment in the hummer, when I sat up and saw Q for the first time. HIs clothes were the same, hair the same. There were no marks on his hands or face. He was sitting down, so I couldn't tell if he got hurt from where he went.
Then I visualized the footwell, and his boots. The tops were clean, but the sides had some dark residue I didn't notice before. Something that dried, something that was sticky. Black and sticky. . .
The tar pits? That has to be it.
"Hey kid, you still with me?"
I opened my eyes to see Jakkar standing before me, hand out.
He's not my father. Never was, never will be. I'm not going to let him into my life, not after everything that's happened.
I stand. "Drop me off at the place I told you about. I have to get my friends."
He looks at me. "So you are headed for the Lift."
I nod.
"Well, that makes things easier."
"What are you talking about?"
Jakkar rubs his face. "That monster will come after the nuke again. Whatever the hell I did back there-"
"It's a mutation. You and him both were affected from the explosion twenty years ago. You must've been exposed to a lot of radiation because of your proximity, which is why your mutations are so. . . severe."
He blinks. "Right. Anyway, he will be back. I can drop you off, but I won't be coming back."
"Where you going to go?"
He looks back towards the cockpit doors. "There's a live nuke on this plane, and one way or another, it's going to go off. I don't think this thing was made to be deactivated." He puts his hand on the nuke. "I know just where to put it, and it should give you and your friends enough time to do whatever it is you need to do."
I didn't question him more. I didn't care anymore. My friends could still be alive. Circe could still be alive. I can still fulfill my promise.
With just under 36 hours left, we'll be cutting it close.