Jack Canyon and The Superweapon of Atlantis | CHAPTER TWO

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"This is really just great," the brunette said angrily. "Jack, you had to come here, first off. Then you had to go and get yourself caught!" She shifted her look to her captor. "He's always getting caught. When he was sixteen, I caught him masturbating."

"MOM!" Jack screamed out at her. His hazel eyes met with hers, they matched perfectly in color. Though, his appeared more furious. Jack's eyes were mostly green with a brown ring around the pupil of his eye. The lighting always made them appear more of one color sometimes.

"What?" Katelyn Canyon asked innocently. "Don't want this pretty young lady to know about your embarrassing moments?"

"Not really!" Jack argued. Then he sighed. "I can't believe this."

"You can't believe this?!"

"Oh, shut up," the German shouted. "Herr Canyon! You have the journal?"

"I don't know," Jack said. "Who am I dealing with?"

"Johanna Mahler," the woman spoke. "Your mother was so cooperative with us at the beginning. Then she started to slack on her work. I need you to translate this text."

"Again, I don't know," Jack replied. He looked back at his mother. "Why did you even mail it to me if you didn't want me to come here?"

"I didn't mail it," Kate stated plainly.

"Then who did?"

"I did," Johanna said victoriously. "Though, I sent men to find you six months after sending it."

"You blew up my home!" Jack cried out.

"If we could not have the journal, no one could," the German voice announced.

"It was a trap," Kate told him. "A ruse. They knew you would come once you knew what you had there."

"I must have been gone on one of my adventures," Jack mentioned to the gorgeous German woman.

"So, now that we have the small talk out of the way, decipher the scroll," Johanna ordered him.

"No," Jack told her.

"Fine," the German accent rang thickly in her voice. "Then you die."

Jack laughed at her for a moment. "Killing me won't do anything for you."

Johanna paused for a second and nodded. "You're right. Then she dies."

"And what was your purpose of coming here?" Jack's mom asked him.

"I came here to save you!"

"Such a wonderful job you're doing," she chastised him.

Jack was growing angry of her patronizing ways.

"So, who is going to come save you?" She asked.

Jack huffed and spun around with his fist, knocking Johanna back. "Let's go!" He yelled as he grabbed his mother's arm to drag her along.

"I can't believe you hit a woman," she said in shock.

"Well, you get used to it," Jack told her, remembering all the women he had to battle before.

"Funny what you get used to then, huh?" Katelyn asked still shocked and being dragged along.

"You have no idea," Jack answered as they moved through the hallways. He looked as nervous as a animal sitting in the waiting room of a veterinarian's office. Though he would say he was being alert. He kept an eye out for any German folk who would want to stop them or do harm to them. "So, who is that woman?"

"She's the owner of this castle, and a baroness of sorts," Kate told him as they neared intersecting hallways. "She's hoping to bring Germany back from its fall in the second World War."

"How did you meet this lovely individual?" He asked as he sneaked across the hall.

"She hired us," Kate replied cautiously. "My team and I were to excavate what she believed the be a tomb or temple. What we found was an ancient vault."

Jack paused and looked at her. He was curious. He caught her smile, because she knew she had his full attention.

"This was in Libya," Kate mentioned. "We were too late, though. Inside the temple was a single papyrus scroll, and nothing else. It seems as if someone had already raided the treasures."

Jack looked around the corner and spotted some men down the stairwell. "We'll have to continue this conversation elsewhere."

"What is it?" She peeked around the corner to see the men. "What now?"

"We go back," Jack told her as he turned, but he saw men coming toward them. "Not good."

The men screamed in German, alerting the others.

"Follow me," Jack yelled as he punched the closest man in the hallway. He spun and saw the others coming up the stairs. Without hesitation, he grabbed the rope tied in the corner near the small opening in the bricks which formed a window. He looked down at the table and then at the iron chandelier. "Come on!" He offered his hand to Kate.

She grabbed on and watched as he untied the rope. "You're insane!"

"I learned from the best," Jack told her with a cocky smile. He jerked her close and swung down into the room, landing on the wooden table in the center of the chamber. He held onto the rope tightly and let go of his mother. "Peace of cake."

"But what about them?" She pointed at the incoming men who had anger on their faces.

"There!" Jack yelled as he pointed at the only other exit. He let go of the rope, allowing the chandelier to crash into the table.

The German men halted for a moment to allow the shards and splinters to settle.

Jack and Kate were already gone from the room. They shifted through the maze of corridors and chambers.

"So, about that vault," Jack mentioned.

"I thought you wanted to wait until we were out of this mess, first," she replied.

As bullets tore into the wall just above their heads, Jack ducked low and looked back at her. "Okay, maybe we should wait."

"Good plan," Kate said as they moved into an empty chamber. She noticed the room had no exits, except for a window. She peered outside and then turned back to Jack. "Bad plan!"

"Don't worry," he stated as he locked the door. "I always have an escape route." He jumped up onto the window ledge

"When I woke up this morning, suicide wasn't on my agenda," Kate told him as she watched him climb up. She poked her head out of the window to see him climbing up a long flag. It appeared to be the insignia of Mahler's family crest. "God, Jack, you're insane."

Jack climbed all the way to the top, where a large brass-colored pole held the flag in place. He glanced down for a moment to make sure his mother was following him. Then he climbed over the ledge of the roof.

Kate followed behind him. She remembered her younger days being like this, but not now, not at this age. She reached the top and he helped her up.

"We have to keep moving," Jack told her as he moved across the rooftop. He spotted the courtyard at the heart of the castle and knew where he was. Beyond the east wall there was something white shimmering in the light. The night had seemed to linger forever, but finally, the sun was beginning to rise.

"I need a break, son," she panted. "I'm not as young as I used to be."

"Oh, come on, mom," Jack pleaded with her. "You're as good now as you ever were."

"Maybe in mind, my dear," she said leaning against a ledge for support. "I was like you, you know? Always seeking out adventure. It has taken its toll on my body in recent years."

"Okay, then," Jack agreed with a nod. "So, tell me. . ."

"About the vault?"

"No, this castle," he answered.

"It was built sometime in the mid--"

"No, about the layout," Jack interrupted. "I want to know what that is beyond the eastern wall."

"That?" She asked as she squinted to see. "It seems to be her own personal air field."

"Must be a new addition to castles that I didn't know about," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Let's go," she replied as he helped her up.

They moved quickly around the rooftops toward the east wall, where they discovered half a dozen small planes.

"Our way out," Jack stated as he headed down a staircase to the airstrip.

Before they could make it to the planes, gunfire rang out, forcing the duo to duck beneath a plane.

The planes were in two rows of three, allowing for some cover, but the men were advancing.

Jack maneuvered to the last plane on the first row. "Get in." He told Kate as he pulled the door open. "Be quiet." He closed the door and made sure it was secure. Then he moved around to the other side and climbed in.

Kate smiled proudly at her son. She just could not believe he mastered the skills of flying a plane. "Wow, son, you can fly a plane?"

"Sure," he replied. "I mean, who can't?" He started it up and steered it out onto the runway. He began to pick up speed as the Germans began firing at it, trying to slow them down or stop them completely.

"Where did you learn to do this?" She asked, still smiling proudly.

"You know, one of those computer games," Jack said as the plane began to lift up.

Kate felt her heart skip a few beats as the plane lifted off the ground. This was not a computer game.

"Are you okay?" Jack asked her. "You look pale."

"I'm fine," she answered. "Do you want to know about that vault now?"

"If it will put you to ease," Jack said.

"I think it will," she began to explain. "The vault was empty. I guess some Libyan looters arrived several hundreds or thousands of years ago. I mean, it hadn't been disturbed in ages. Besides, it had been pummeled by decades of sandstorms."

"Go on."

"Well, I found this scroll with a funny symbol in the corner," she told him as she pulled her journal from her pocket. "See this?"

Jack looked over at the strange symbol for a moment. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Neither have I," Kate replied. "The linguist on my team began recording the language from the scroll into my journal. He even tried to translate it. He thinks the language is possible an older version of Latin."

"Huh?" Jack asked. "Older Latin? Like Old English?"

"Sort of," she replied.

Jack glanced out the window, then back at the "Old Latin." "Sciencia," he read. "Science."

"Well, there's more to it. It reads: I am a man of science from the land of Atlantia, or what we have translated to Atlantis."

"It talks about machines, a weapon that will level continents. . . It's a list," Jack noticed. "There's the symbol again, then Talus. What's that mean?"

"I believe it to be the man who wrote this," she explained.

"You mean, there is a survivor of the Atlantis disaster?"

"I think so," she replied. "Well, there's at least this one document."

"Libya, huh?" Jack asked. "I have some friends in the Mediterranean."

"Yeah?"

"Maybe they could help out," Jack said as the plane made an odd noise.

"What was that?" Kate asked in a panic.

"Eh," Jack answered. "That's the sound of the engine running out of fuel."

"Did you forget to fill her up before heading out?" She asked in a motherly tone.

Jack glanced back through the window to see the fluid spilling out of the tank in the rear. "More like we losing fuel to bullet holes."

"Where are we?"

"That's the coastline," Jack said as he pointed out the front window. "That looks like Italy and Greece." He jumped up from the seat and moved to the back. He tossed things about as he scoured through it.

"You can land this thing, right?"

Jack gave her a look of uncertainty.

"You did cover that in the computer games, didn't you?"

"Of course," Jack told her as he pulled out a parachute. "Though, there was always a wet tank. We're empty, dry as a bone." He continued to explore the plane, only to find nothing. "Uh oh."

"What, uh oh?"

"Only one chute!" He cried out as he rushed back to her.

"You go," she demanded. "I'm too old for this."

"Nonsense." He began to strap into the parachute and grabbed her, strapping her on as well. "You're coming with me."

"Oh, no, no, no!"

Before she could argue further, Jack had jumped from the plane.