CHAPTER THREE
The Juggernaut and S. H. I. E. L. D.
When they came out of the ice cream shop, the weather had turned gray and semi fogy. In the period of time that they had taken to obtain their ice cream, the bright early spring day had reverted beck to a cool, dark late winter day. The breeze had turned cool with a hint of much colder to come. After several adjustments for who bought what, Alex was finally able to get the allowances distributed to everyone's satisfaction ... except for Franklin, who on seeing that Katie got to carry her own money, insisted that he should be able to do the same. Alex finally compromised by giving him $3.00 the same as Katie so that he would have his own money also .
"We should go over to the Bradford School and see if Kristov can come out to play," Jack said.
"Good idea!" Franklin said enthusiastically, remembering how last month his less than enthusiastic acceptance of Kristoff who Franklin had been told was only a Dr. Doom clone, had caused a major rift between himself and Jack, one that had literally terrified the five-year-old and one that Franklin had worked long and hard to repair.
"Look," Julie said, pointing to the south, "What's that?"
Fifth Avenue at about 68th Street was literally 'boiling' with flashing lights and sirens. From behind them, down Fifth Avenue roared a convoy of NYPD vehicles including a SWAT van. The NYPD cars fanned out and completely blocked off Fifth Avenue at about 70th Street. The doors of the SWAT van sprang open and six heavily armed police troopers jumped out and immediately took up defensive positions, behind cars, in building doorways, and in alleyways. Overhead, a NYPD helicopter orbited the scene.
"Look!" Jack gasped breathlessly. "WHAT is THAT?"
There was a C R A C K sound from the barrier wall running along side Central Park's eastern perimeter, and then several other loud cracking noises and a loud ripping sound. Seconds later a dull KAH-BOOM! rolled over the park as a section of the eight foot high retaining wall gave way and collapsed inward into the park. Standing in the middle of the dust and vapor was a somewhat indistinct but huge form. The airborne debris thinned out some as it settled to the ground and the wisps of the slowly thickening fog seemed to pull back for an instant, and the figure standing at the center of a ring of 40 or 50 police officers was clearly visible for the first time.
Franklin put his hand into Allison's, and Julie clamped down protectively on the other hand at the same time she reached for Katie's hand.
"Alex," Franklin said softly, "That -- that's --"
"I know," Alex said quietly. "I recognize him from the 'Dangerous Mutants' section of our current events class: The Juggernaut."
Suddenly there was a sound like fireworks, and the brown armored figure swung his arms around, as though swatting flies. Suddenly Alex realized that the police had opened fire on the Juggernaut, who seemed totally unaffected by the whizzing 7.62mm steel jacketed armor piercing ammunition flying through the air.
"C'mon," Jack said. "We've gotta help the police! Power Pack Attack!"
"Are you crazy?" Alex asked. "That's the Juggernaut ... a major league villain. The X-Men AND the Avengers working together couldn't take him."
"All the more reason we've gotta help the police!" Jack said. "Costume on!"
"Allison, will you help watch Katie and Franklin? Costume on," Alex whispered. "I hope we're up to this."
"Of course Alex."
The indistinct flickering of other worldly energies around skinny kid bodies was not noticed by the excited crown of on lookers who were quickly forming to watch the show. Allison firmly took both Katie and Franklin's hands while Julie used her power to blend with the gathering fog.
"Allison," Katie squirmed in the older girl's grip. "We should help."
"Okay," Allison said surprising Katie. "How?"
That stopped Katie dead in her tracks. She didn't actually have a plan.
A swoosh and a terrific down draft heralded the arrival of a large troop carrier VTOL skimmer with the S. H. I. E. L. D. logo prominently displayed on its side. The skimmer hovered for an instant and then settled to a landing in the park to the south of Juggernaut. A ramp dropped and a dozen fully armored S. H. I. E. L. D. mandroids clutching large caliber plasma blasters and military grade laser rifles swarmed out and quickly took up skirmish positions. Another skimmer arrived, this one with sinister looking gun turrets and other weapons mounts. The second VTOL made a single low level pass and then quickly climbed to about five hundred feet and began a wide orbit of the park.
Someone on the ground yelled "OPEN FIRE" and the foggy air was rent with the hissing of hyperpower lasers, the loud staccato reports of assault rifles and the dull "FWAAP!" of the S. H. I. E. L. D. plasma blasters. In seconds a square block behind Juggernaut was enveloped in fire ignited by plasma ricochets and laser strikes on inflammable materials. Civilians screamed and ran for their lives. The fire department struggled to contain and put out the fires.
"Cease Fire!" Roared someone, and slowly the smoke and fog cleared away to reveal Juggernaut still standing there, so far totally impervious to all the firepower arrayed against him.
The S. H. I. E. L. D. skimmer cut loose with a sustained burst from its miniguns, stitching a line of dirt fountains all around the Juggernaut as an electronically amplified voice demanded: "SURRENDER IN THE NAME OF THE UNITED NATION OF PLANET EARTH!"
The bullet shaped helmet jerked around toward the skimmer to snarl an obscenity at the S. H. I. E. L. D. aircraft and its pilot. Juggernaut's hand closed around a chuck of concrete from the Park perimeter wall and with an audible grunt he heaved the 60 kg chunk of concrete at the skimmer.
The skimmer pilot slammed over the cyclic and stomped hard on the right foot pedal while jerking up sharply on the collective, twisting the throttle to maximum to feed the ultimate amount of power to the GE nulear-electric thrusters that supplied both lift and thrust to the skimmer. The result was that the 76 ton aircraft swerved out of the way of the chunk of concrete ... which continued in an upward trajectory until it ran out of impulse, about 50,000 feet over southern New Jersey. This same concrete missile became a "meteorite" which smashed into the garden of Mrs. I. Filchem, a retired truant officer, scaring that worthy almost literally to death.
"Come on, Alex," Julie said anxiously. "So far no one has been hurt, but if this keeps up," Julie waved her arm toward the battle which was now resumed at full force, "We'll be too late and people will start getting killed." The air was thick with the smell of ozone from laser fire and of cordite from automatic weapons fire. Over and above it all was the bellowing of Juggernaut.
"I think I party agree with Julie," Allison said. "People are going to start getting hurt. We should start trying to get people out of the area."
"Wait, I've got a plan," Jack said suddenly. "Julie, you start reinforcing this fog, and Alex, you grab Franklin. Katie," Jack said as he adjusted his grip on Alex's wrist and degravitated him and Franklin, "Fly as fast as you can right toward the Juggernaut. I'll grab him and degravitate him. Then we'll get him out of here - we'll fly him over to Roosevelt Island in the East River; then S. H. I. E. L. D. and the cops will have nothing left to shoot at -- Juggernaut can rant and rave and punch out junk cars instead."
"I like it," Julie said. "It'll defuse the situation fast."
Alex and Allison both nodded, it did seem to be the best way to use their powers to help. Julie intensified the local fog and the four remaining kids linked hands as Jack made them weightless.
"Okay," Katie said and in an instant was flying at full speed toward the battle scene, dragging a degravitized Alex, Allison, Jack and Franklin behind her through a thickening fog; half normal fog and half Julie's Kymellian power. By using the same density waves that she used to propel herself, Julie was able to concentrate not only her own 'density' fog, but was also able to intensify and direct the normal fog from the East River, which was growing in thickness all the time. The result was that by the time Katie reached Juggernaut, no one not equipped with IR sensors could see more than six to eight inches in any direction in the pearl-gray fog.
So fast was Katie's 'abduction' of the Juggernaut, that S. H. I. E. L. D.'s mandroids missed Power Pack's participation in the deed completely. The way it looked to their IR augmented cyber-eyes was one minute the target was there, and the next it was gone - there simply was no Juggernaut. The instant that Jack's fingers closed around a bit of torn leather and plastic from Juggernaut's armor, all 230 kilograms of his mass became weightless; but not however, inertialess, it still took a lot of effort to get all that mass moving. Katie orbited the Juggernaut several times to build up speed, and then dove in on him. Jack reached out and degravitated him, and Katie swung around, jerking the 7'4" giant off balance. With him stumbling backwards and finding no traction because of his weightless condition, Juggernaut's own mass combined with the momentum of Power Pack to get him moving.
"What the hell --?" Cain swore, but the words froze in his throat as he looked down at the grinning face of a small, blue-eyed boy clutching his breastplate where it had been shredded by a S. H. I. E. L. D. plasma bolt.
"Relax, Big Guy. You're coming with us!"
Cain Marko realized that his feet were no longer touching the ground, so they were flying - no way to tell in this fog how high they were, and so Cain stopped struggling.
"You're gonna regret this, punk!" Cain snarled.
"Probably," Jack said. "I was all for letting S. H. I. E. L. D. finish you off."
"Shit!" Cain swore, "Those bastards have been trying to corner me and Black Tom for years..."
"Ummmm, naughty, naughty!" came another childish voice from beyond the limits of Cain's vision. "You used BAD words!" Then there was a high pitched treble giggle, that was quickly joined by another. The giggles hinted at small children who had caught an adult in a faux pas.
"Quiet you two." An older voice said sternly. Older, but still prepubescent, Cain judged. WHAT WAS HAPPENING?
"We're over the East River," Alex called to Katie, "Set down on Roosevelt Island, it's just weeds and junkyards..."
Meanwhile aboard the S. H. I. E. L. D. skimmers, a bright red indicator lamp went on the Comm/EW/ELINT operator's panel, and a message began to snake across the CRT of the aircraft's "secure" communications receiver. The EWO poked the pilot in the ribs and shouted over the roar of the engines:
"Priority message from S. H. I. E. L. D. HQ," and pointed to the screen.
OPERATION "SNAKE CHARMER" IS GO. ALL OUT WORLDWIDE ASSAULT ON HYDRA
AND COBRA WILL COMMENCE AT 0935 HRS EST. ALL CURRENT SHIELD FIELD OPS ARE
SUSPENDED. ALL SHIELD PERSONNEL REPORT TO YOUR STAGING AREAS NLT 0915 HRS EST.
SIGNED:
NICK FURY, COLONEL, UNAF
COMMANDING -- SHIELD
"All right!" The pilot said with unrestrained enthusiasm, "The BIG time!" He glanced at the small chronometer above the instrument dash. 09:01:54 it read
"Strike Com One to Strike Com Two," The EWO said, pressing his throat mic against his larynx.
"Strike Two, go."
"Did you copy the recall?"
"Ah-firmative. You untangle from the NYPD, and we'll see you back at the barn."
"Roger that. Strike Com One out."
The whine of the skimmer's nuclear-electric impellers echoed off the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan as the skimmer began its preparations for flight. The squad of mandroids were already climbing into the skimmer's cargo bay.
"All aboard, Sarge?" The pilot asked.
"Yes, Sir!" The S. H. I. E. L. D. sergeant said and held up his thumb. "Let's kick some COBRA butt!"
The pilot turned back to the instruments as the computer controlled auto sequencer finished its check list, and the Christmas Tree on the midpanel finished running all of its myriad indicator lights from amber to green. Newspapers, dead leaves and other trash and detritus swirled in the backblast of the S. H. I. E. L. D. skimmer's take off.
The fog was thinning as Power Pack landed Juggernaut in the center of what appeared to be a large field, overgrown with underbrush and weeds, several dozen rusted out and obviously abandoned truck chassis from the last century's failed experiment with the internal combustion engine were scattered around amid the wreckage of more modern electric cars, mounds of scrap metal and decaying trash. As Juggernaut's feet touched the ground he gave a slight, but audible sigh of relief, one thing Cain did not enjoy was not being in control of his surroundings or condition. Cain removed his helmet to better survey the situation.
The Juggernaut was PISSED OFF!
"Awright," Cain Marco, the Juggernaut, growled, "So you've got me -- now what do you kids think you're gonna DO with me? Why'd you bring me out here?"
Juggernaut's eyes were filled with rage and frustration. Hoping to calm the volatile giant down, Alex stepped forward.
"We had to get you out of there. People might have gotten hurt," the twelve-year-old explained in a reasonable voice.
"Yeah -- a LOT of people WERE gonna get hurt -- SO WHAT?" Juggernaut said belligerently. He waived a huge fist in Alex's direction, but the boy stood his ground. "Maybe I should start with a bunch of too ornery kids!"
"Please, Mr. Marco," Julie said as she suddenly materialized out of a cloud and stepped forward toward the 7'4" giant, "Can't you just tell us WHY you're so angry. Maybe we can help."
If Juggernaut was startled by Julie's sudden materialization he did not let it show in his actions or his words. He merely looked at the two children and muttered: "Nahh, you can't help. What's the use?"
"You were obviously upset about SOMETHING back in the park," Allison said, encouraged by the fact that he sounded a little less furious now. "Something must have happened to make you so angry."
"Yeah," Katie chimed in, stepping out from behind Alex and Allison to get a better look at Juggernaut. "You broke the wall and said some bad words!" She reminded him, giggling. Cain recognized the same giggle he'd heard before.
"Katie!" Franklin whispered, still mostly concealed by Alex's larger frame. Franklin nudged Katie, "Quit laughing at him. You hate being laughed at when YOU break stuff. You're gonna make him mad again!"
Katie gave Franklin a light shove. "I'm not making him mad," she retorted triumphantly. The children looked up a Juggernaut and saw that Katie was right. His eyes were now filled with confusion as Juggernaut stared with disbelief at the six children who stood in front of him. The oldest couldn't be more than eleven or twelve, and ALL but one of them were warring costumes.
"All right," Cain said slowly, spreading his huge hands in front of him. "Let's call a truce for now. Who are you kids? You can't be any of my stepbrother's students ... you're all too young. Who ...WHAT are you?"
"We're POWER PACK!" Katie and Franklin shouted together enthusiastically; Katie gave a quick half leap and flew a small radius orbit around the clearing in the midst of the junk yard.
"Actually," Alex began, "We're NOT mutants. We were given our powers, kinda like you were --"
"By a demon from beyond space and time?" Cain asked, suddenly interested.
"No," Julie said, "We were at our house in Virginia Beach last summer when a UFO landed ..."
"Yeah, Friday -" Katie supplied helpfully.
"...And onboard was an alien from a race called the Kymellians ..."
"Whitey. He's good. But there were some Snarks also, they were bad..." Katie interjected.
"We were - well - transformed -" Alex started again, "By Whitey so that we could save our parents and the whole world from the Snarks. Each of us has a different power. For example, I'm Destroyer," Alex said bending over and picking up a piece of scrap metal. It slowly began to glow warm yellow and abruptly vanished in a small pop of light. "I can disintegrate anything."
"I'm Molecula," Julie said. "I can alter the density of my body to either become a cloud," the air was suddenly again filled with a deep fog, "Or," she said as she rematerialized, "I can shrink down to toy size ..." a six-inch tall Julie piped up at them before returning to her normal "powers-neutral" condition.
Cain turned toward Jack, "You I know do some kind of levitation trick..."
"Not exactly," Jack bragged. "The Great Counterweight can alter the gravitational curve of space/time. I can either make things weightless, or I can make them weigh thousands of tons," Jack said grinning. "Mostly, I just make things light enough so that Starstreak can carry 'em."
"I'm Starstreak!" Katie shouted, and as an added demonstration of her power, ran around Juggernaut, using her ground based newly developed ability, and then jumped into the air and flew several wide orbits of the clearing before alighting lightly on her feet several meters away.
"I'm Tattletale," Franklin said shyly. "with my dream-self I can be ..." Franklin suddenly collapsed into Jack's waiting arms, apparently asleep. "...two places at once." came a voice from behind Cain.
Cain whirled around and there, about a dozen feet away was a ghostly, semitransparent copy of the 5-year-old boy. "It's like the Twilight Zone," Cain muttered. "What about you?" Marco said looking at Allison. "You don't have a costume I see."
"My name is Eclipse. I'm the team gymnast," Allison said.
"Eclipse," Jack said softly. "Cool name."
"We were on our way to see if a friend of ours could come out and play in the park," Jack said, "when we saw you..."
"When S. H. I. E. L. D. showed up," Alex said, "We figured we'd better get you out of there."
"HAW!" Juggernaut laughed. "Those S. H. I. E. L. D. jokers couldn't have even put a scratch on me!"
"Yes," Julie said, "That's probably true. But what about the other people and the kids in the park?"
"...And the cats and dogs," Katie added helpfully.
Marko stood mute, suddenly very ashamed of himself.
"Why were you so angry?" Allison asked again.
"It doesn't matter ..." Marko sighed slowly.
"Sure it does," Alex told him. "Maybe we can help."
"Nobody can help me." Juggernaut sounded very dejected.
"Maybe we can." Alex repeated sympathetically. "Tell us what happened."
Katie felt sorry for Juggernaut. It wasn't often that she heard such bitterness and defeat in anyone's voice. She touched one of his massive arms. "Please tell us," she coaxed.
"Well, uh ... I was trying to do something I'm not too good at ... "
"Wow!" Jack said, "THAT seems hard to imagine, something that YOU'RE not good at?"
Cain glowered at the boy thinking that perhaps he was being sarcastic. But Jack seemed genuinely incredulous.
"I can't read - okay?" Cain confessed slowly, "And I need to find out all about the Jewel of Cytorrak."
"Yeah," Jack said slowly, "I remember that. It was just after we came to New York, and during a fight you were having with the X-Men, right?"
"Yeah -"
"And then you threw the Jewel into orbit! I remember the TV news about that - it was GREAT!"
"Not so great," Cain sighed. "I need to get it back."
"What? The Jewel?" Jack asked.
"Yeah, it's important."
"Why?" asked Katie.
"It all started when I went to Tom's birthday party."
"A birthday party?" Katie asked brightly, "I'm gonna be six on Tuesday. Parties are fun - but I already had mine - combined with Franklin's birthday last month..."
"Knock it off, Katie. I wanna hear the rest of the story," Jack said.
"This party was fun when it started," Cain began, "and I thought I'd found the perfect gift for Tom - the Jewel - Tom's very fond of gems, and this one is a beauty, this big," he held up his huge fist, "A ruby."
"Wow!" the five members of Power Pack were suitably impressed.
"But things just never seem to work out for me ..."
"Why? What happened?" Julie asked.
"When Tom touched the Jewel, he gained half the power of Juggernaut, and I lost half of it. And when I got it back, it scared me to think that the power would be divided up between as many as touched the Jewel ... so I decided to not take that chance again. I threw the Jewel into orbit. But ever since then, I've been getting weaker..."
"YOU?" Power Pack exclaimed together.
"Oh, its not bad enough for anyone but me to notice; but its defiantly true, and I think it has something to do with the Jewel. So I went to the library trying to find information ...except those intellectual four-eyes laughed at me ... ME! THE JUGGERNAUT! They LAUGHED at me!" Cain paused a minute to regain his composure and then said in a very low and sinister voice, "But they will be sorry that they laughed at the Juggernaut."
Slowly a plan began to form in Allison's mind. "I think we CAN help," Allison said.
"Huh?" Jack asked, "But how? We don't know anything about demons or jewels for that matter."
"Maybe not," Allison said. "But we CAN go to the library and try to find out."
"That's true," Alex said. "Allison is about the best researcher in IS34. If anyone can track down information on this Jewel of Cytorrak, I'll bet it's Allison."
"You'd really do that for me?" Marko asked.
"We can sure try ... at least go to the library."
"But I tried the library and they ..."
"Well, don't worry, I still have a few tricks left," Allison said and grabbed Alex's costume sleeve and pulled him aside. "I'll take Julie, Katie and Franklin with me and we'll go over to the main library on 42nd Street and see what I can find out. It's just about 10:00 so Katie and Franklin can go to the Children's Room for story hour while Julie and I go upstairs to the adult library."
"Okay," Alex agreed. "It sounds like a good plan to me. Just don't let Katie start showing off her powers."
"I'll take care of that, I'm the camouflage expert." Julie laughed. "Don't worry, no one will even catch a glimpse of us. This fog is absolutely perfect."
"Hey, wait a minute," Katie said. "If Jack is going to stay here, how will we get to the Library? I can't fly all of us without Jack to make us weightless."
"Hee, Hee, Hee," Allison giggled. "You're too hung up on your powers."
"We'll take MetroLink," Julie said.
"There is a station about a five minute walk from here," Allison said. "Though why they have a station here in junkyard central I'll never know."
As Julie, Katie, Allison and Franklin departed for the main library, Jack and Cain had begun a conversation -- after all, it was not everyday that Cain Marko ran across a nine-year-old boy who could do the things he'd seem Jack do.
"Yeah," Jack bragged, "I can degavitate ANYTHING."
"That's quite a boast from someone who is under five feet tall," Cain chuckled and proceeded to stride over to a rusted truck chassis, complete with transmission and engine block.
"Can you do THIS?" Cain challenged, hefting the truck over his head and tossing it like a toy to land some twenty meters away in a deafening clang and shriek of over stressed metals.
"Pretty good," Jack admitted. "For an amateur!" The nine-year-old walked over to a twisted pile of scrap metal four meters high and perhaps twice that in length at the base. He paused and looked over his shoulder at Alex and Juggernaut, rubbing his hands together, and then along the thighs of his costume. Jack took a breathe and grabbed a section of I-beam protruding from the pile.
There was no sound as both Alex and Cain held their breathes. Slowly over the next few seconds a strange checkerboard pattern of black and silver rectangles appeared over a portion of the pile of scrap iron. This effect spread to Jack himself until his normal Power Pack costume - silver with black trim - was totally midnight black with an ever shifting pattern of silvery rectangles dancing over its surface. Around Jack's hands, a subtle blue glow which might have been missed by a casual observer appeared and spread to the I-beam. There was a horrendous shriek of over stressed metal as slowly at first, but with noticeable action, the I-beam, and the pile of scrap iron began to move - slowly clawing its way into the sky in direct violation of both Newtonian and Einsteinian gravitational theories. Finally, some three minutes later, Jack was balancing the eighty tons of scrap metal over his head. He then began to ease it slowly back to earth. There was a creak and groan from the pile of scrap as it was again subject to the entire force of earth's gravitational field.
"I'd have called anyone who told me about that a liar," Cain said softly. "If I weren't here to see it with my own eyes..."
"I can't get enough leverage on something that big to throw it," Jack admitted. "But my super-gee mega punch can knock out ANY bad guy."
"HAW! Try it on ME!" Cain laughed.
"Well ... uh ...," Jack shuffled his feet, "I don't know if I should..."
"HAW! Don't worry about me, kid. I'm the Juggernaut. I've stood up to S. H. I. E. L. D. plasma cannons at point blank range!"
"He's right, Jack. Juggernaut's invulnerable," Alex whispered. "So go on, really knock him back on his heels. Show him what Power Pack Attack means!"
"Oh-KAY!" Jack said with enthusiasm. He rarely got a chance to use his mega punch except in a scaled down way. This would be his first attempt to bring anything like the full power of his Kymellian ability to influence and focus gravity to bear.
"Ready?" he asked Cain.
Marko planted his feet and grinned down at Jack. "Take your best shot, kid."
Jack took a deep breathe and in a movement almost too fast for the eye to follow reared back and swung at Juggernaut with all of his augmented Kymellian power.
There was a loud, dull KAH-WHANG! as Jack's fist landed dead center of Juggernaut's breast plate, just below the solar plexus. Cain momentarily teetered, before stepping backward. A thunderous "WHOOFF" came from Juggernaut.
Cain bent over and took several deep breathes.
"I can see why you don't get to use that much!" Cain said. "If you'd hit the Empire State Building like that ... it'd fall down. You pack a punch like a hydrogen bomb."
For the next hour and a half, while waiting for Julie to return from the Library, Alex and Jack listened to Cain tell tales of his life in the CoDominium Marines 15 years ago during the Eugenics Wars just before he had found the Jewel of Cytorrak.
A Whoosh and the visible thickening of the fog -- which had started to lift - heralded the arrival of the rest of Power Pack, back from the Library.
"So how was that for a stealth approach, Julie said, pleased with herself. "We got off MetroLink and snuck up on you boys, you never even knew we were here until I made the fog thicker."
"Who're you trying to kid?" Jack playfully challenged his sister. "You just got here."
"Uh-uh," Katie said smugly, "we sneaked up on you."
"Prove it!" Jack said.
Alex glanced at Juggernaut who had a bemused look on his face. Alex just shrugged and the man mountain smiled. Cain had at first thought of Alex as a Poindexter type who always had all the answers and loved to rub everyone else's nose in it, but he was slowly changing his opinion of Alex Power to the better.
"We heard Cain's story from the Eugenics War," Allison said and quoted back a passage.
Cain Marco had very little practical experience with children. He had always considered them to be whining pests, but these kids seemed different. And the older girl -- Allison he thought -- using his Christian name instead of his mutant codeword Juggernaut softened his view of all these strange youngsters. Maybe they could help.
"Well?" Jack asked. "What did you find out?"
Julie frowned "There's good news and some bad news."
"Uhnn," Cain groaned, "Better let me have the GOOD news first. I need it today."
"Alex was right. Allison is a genius at research," Julie began. "Cytorrak was listed in the encyclopedia all right, he was a Korean demon from prehistoric times - but it was all very general information, and they didn't even mention the Jewel."
"And that's the GOOD news?" Asked Alex.
"No, not all of it," Allison picked up the report, "there was a note scribbled on a slip of paper stuffed into the encyclopedia by whoever was doing research on Cytorrak last. I think it might be a clue as to where we can find out more."
"A clue?" Jack said. "Let me see it, you know I always win at the game of Clue."
"Not THAT kind of clue, you moron," Julie said. "THIS kind of clue," the eleven-year-old said holding up a slip of paper, on it in faded ball-point pen ink was written:
FOR THE OCCULT AND MYSTIC ARTS
176 West 42nd Street
New York City, 10036
"That's pretty near the Zone," Alex said, examining the slip of paper. "But it does sound like the kind of place we might find out more."
"We're not suppose to go near the Zone," Katie reminded her older brother.
"Yeah Katie. I know. But this is important," Alex said.
"Okay, so what's the BAD news?" Jack asked.
"I don't know if they'll let kids in," Allison said.
"Don't worry about that" Juggernaut said in an ominous tone of voice. "We'll make them an offer they CAN'T refuse."
To Be Continued ...