Picking up a year after the events of Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation, Jack and his fellow students are now well into their School of Thought training and are "sidekicking" for official, card-carrying super heroes. But, even though Jack feels more at home in the Imagine Nation, he’s still hiding secrets from his friends Skerren and Allegra, both about his shocking connection to their enemy Revile and about his “Top Secret” school assignment, which involves investigating the Rüstov computer virus that affects the Mechas. Jack is busy trying to find out how far the Rüstov sleeper virus has spread, working to find a cure, and striving to avoid the dire future that Revile warned him about. Meanwhile, Jonas Smart is working just as hard to discover what Jack is hiding from everyone. When a rogue Secreteer--the protectors of secrets of inhabitants of the Imagine Nation--starts selling secrets to the highest bidder, Smart is ready and waiting. Jack knows that if Smart finds out the truth about him and Revile, he’s as good as dead. When Jack discovers that the Secreteer causing all this trouble also has information about his father, the distractions really start piling up. If Jack is going to help prevent a second Rüstov invasion, keep Smart from discovering his secrets, and find out what a shadowy, half-mad Secreteer knows about his long-lost father, he'll need to learn to trust his friends, and to find the true path toward becoming a hero himself. "Fans of Eragon and Harry Potter are sure to give Jack Blank a try" --Library Media Connection Matt Myklusch lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons. The Secret War CHAPTER 1 Fighting Gravity Jack hustled through the streets of Empire City with a baseball cap pulled down low on his head, the brim nearly covering his eyes. He was hoping to avoid being recognized, but he didn’t make it five blocks before a woman and her son stopped him on the street. “Excuse me,” the woman said. “I’m sorry to bother you but . . . are you Jack Blank?” Jack sighed and took off the baseball cap. Some things were no use fighting. “Yep. That’s me,” Jack said with a weary smile. The woman clapped her fingertips together as she bobbed up and down in a little happy dance. “I knew it!” she said. “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!” Jack shot nervous glances to his left and right, looking to see if anyone else had noticed her and, by extension, him. The woman seemed to pick up on this and quickly regained her composure. “I’m sorry, I never do this. Ever. But do you think I could trouble you for an autograph?” she asked. “For my son?” A redheaded boy about Jack’s age, maybe a little younger, smiled eagerly up at Jack and held out a notebook and pen. “Sure,” Jack said, reaching out to take them both. The woman and her son looked slightly familiar to Jack, but he couldn’t quite place them, so he kept the autograph simple and just signed his name. He handed back the notebook and continued on his way, but the celebrity sighting had not gone unnoticed. Jack had to sign a few more autographs and take pictures with another half dozen or so people before he could finally break away, shaking his head in wonder at how much his life had changed in the past year. He had gone from unwanted orphan to suspected alien spy to national treasure. It still amazed Jack how normal it now seemed to live in a city filled with superheroes, ninjas, androids, and aliens. As crazy as it sounded, he’d gotten used to all that fairly quickly. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to fame, though. Especially not his kind of fame, which he considered to be completely undeserved. None of Jack’s fans knew the whole story about him. Jack was grateful for the friends he’d made since coming to the Imagine Nation—people who didn’t give him any special treatment. The general public might have already considered him a great hero, but Jack knew he still had a lot to learn on that front. His teachers knew it too, which was why he still had to attend regular classes with his friends, or, in the case of the School of Thought, irregular classes. School of Thought classes didn’t take place in a single building or according to a standard schedule. They were taught by the Inner Circle, the most powerful heroes in Empire City, a group that was also charged with governing and defending the Imagine Nation. Jack’s teachers were the guardians of the secret roaming island where all the fantastic and unbelievable things on Earth originated. They could hardly be expected to run their school according to some arbitrary schedule. Stendeval, the oldest member of the Inner Circle and the only living person who knew all of Jack’s secrets, always said that life didn’t happen according to a schedule. The world was a classroom. Life was an education. Classes met whenever the Inner Circle called for them, and took place wherever they saw fit to teach. That morning Jack’s lessons were being taught in SeasonStill Park. SeasonStill was the uniq