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ZAK RAVEN

CODE BETA

Darren G. Davis

Zak Raven: Code Beta © 2020 Darren G. Davis & Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All names, characters and events in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Published by Markosia Enterprises, PO BOX 3477, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 9HN.

FIRST PRINTING, May 2020.

Harry Markos, Director.

Paperback: ISBN 978-1-913359-54-6

eBook: ISBN 978-1-913359-55-3

Written and created by Darren G. Davis

Cover illustration by Alex Julian

Book design by: Ian Sharman

www.markosia.com

First Edition

ALSO PUBLISHED BY

MARKOSIA

DORIAN GRAY

DORIAN GRAY: BENEATH THE CANVAS

DORIAN GRAY: BIRTHRIGHT

THE DUCK POND INCIDENT

INSANE JANE

JUSTICE IS SERVED

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

SINBAD: ROGUE OF MARS

STORIES FROM THE CHICKEN SHED HOUSE

SWANSONG

THERMOPYLUNG

THE THRONE ETERNAL

WORDS ON A WALL

WRATH OF THE TITANS:

THE BATTLE FOR ARGOS

ZAK RAVEN: CODE ALPHA

PROLOGUE

Dr. Raine sits at his kitchen table slurping down a smoothie in one hand while twirling a pen in the other hand. In front of him is a note pad with a stick figure with the name ‘Zak Raven’ under it. Around this ‘Zak Raven’ stick figure is a whole series of bubbles. One bubble is labelled ‘gadgets’ another is labelled ‘mentor’ and yet another is labelled ‘friends’. Lines stretch out from the various bubbles and link back into the stick figure labelled ‘Zak Raven’.

To date ‘Zak’ has foiled all of his attempts to take over the city. On top of that Zak has eluded all of his attempts to get rid of him! Can you believe the nerve of that boy, if not the sheer luck of it all! But today is different!

Today Dr. Raine has figured out exactly how to ‘get rid’ of Zak. It was so simple he actually should’ve seen it early on! He has deduced that Zak technically isn’t ‘lucky’ nor is he ‘skilled’! He does however, have every single ‘resource’ in this town needed to defeat him time and time again. In other words, Zak’s advantage lied in a combination of his ‘friends’ and his ‘gadgets’. If he were to be isolated away from either one of these precious resources then getting rid of him would be a cinch!

The question that remains now is ‘how’? How would he go about separating him from his ‘resources!’ Dr. Raine scratches out the stick figure of Zak and laughs manically at his own master plan as he shreds the paper with the Zak Raven stick figure on it!

Suddenly the front door to his house opens and the voice of his daughter breaks his train of thought.

“Dad?”

Dr. Raine quickly regains his composure and answers his daughter in a fatherly voice.

“I’m in the kitchen! Why don’t you come join me for a smoothie?”

Torrance Raine walks into the kitchen with her backpack slung over her shoulder. She looks absolutely exhausted.

“What’s wrong dear? I haven’t seen you this exhausted since your midterms!”

“Well dad, it’s just that I’ve just joined the winter retreat committee.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Well, it gets better. Loren Gilbert put me in charge of finding a place for this year’s winter retreat!”

“Oh? Really?” Dr. Raine sips his smoothie and smiles inwardly; this was what he was looking for! He couldn’t have done it better if he had planned it himself!

“Yeah, and she wants it to be not only ‘memorable’ but in a place where no other winter retreat has ever been before!”

“Hmmm.” Dr. Raine sips his smoothie as his mind reels in anticipation as he hopes against hope that his daughter will ask him for help!

“I think it’s pretty much due to fact that Loren is graduating this year and wants ‘her’ winter retreat to be the most spectacular winter retreat ever! Can you believe it!

The nerve of her, but that still doesn’t change the fact that I have to find a place. ”

“So, have you picked out any place in particular?” “Are you kidding? With the budget Principal

Montal gave us we’ll be lucky if it’ll be held at the ball park!”

“That bad eh?”

“Yeah..” And the colour washes out of Torrance’s face as she pulls up a chair next to her dad.

Dr. Raine decides to seize the opportunity and capitalize on this moment.

“Well, I’m not going to let some snot-nosed senior ruin my daughter’s day!”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Well, since your father has been busy making millions of dollars for the company; you might say the president of the company and I are on very good terms.”

“How is that going to help me?”

“Well, for starters he also holds a sixty-four percent stake in the Wyden ski resort located conveniently an hours drive from town. And since I’ve made his company quite a considerable fortune I’m sure he would be more than willing to help me out.”

“Daddy you’re the best! This is going to work out perfectly!”

And Torrance hugs her father, who inwardly thinks: “How right you are…This is going to work out perfectly..”

CHAPTER ONE

The bell has just rung and Tyler and myself make our way out of Dr. Brady’s class. Funny thing was that Dr. Brady wasn’t here today. In fact, he hasn’t been here all week long!

“Zak? You okay man? You look pretty down, and by that I mean a lot more than your usual ‘down’.”

“Well, it’s weird don’t you think?”

“About what?”

“Dr. Brady hasn’t been here all week! It’s really not like him to miss school!”

“And you’re complaining? Think about it. This is a blessing in disguise! For the first time as far as I can remember, you’re actually caught up in all of your classes!”

“You do have a point there. I mean, I even had time to go and chat with Torrance in the bleachers while Colton was at football practice.”

“See! And you’re concerned about Dr. Brady!”

“Yeah, but you know, all good things must come to an end.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know what day today is?” Tyler ponders this for a moment.

“Friday?”

“Yep, and you know what that means?”

“Oh, It’s the once a week training session you have with Dr. Brady, right?”

“I can see it now, once he finds out I’ve been hanging out with Torrance this entire week he’ll probably give me a lecture on why I should have been patrolling the streets instead of hanging out with Torrance.”

“Sorry, can’t help you there.”

I watch as Tyler suddenly stops and sits down on one of the benches in the school’s courtyard area.

“Tyler, you okay?”

“Uh.. Yeah, never better.”

“Well, then let’s go! I recently got the new Monster Invaders 4 video game you gotta try it!”

“Can I, uh, take a rain check on that?”

“Dude, what’s up? I’ve never heard of you ever turning down a chance to play one of the monster invaders game! Heck, you’re usually the one that preorders the game when you find out about it!”

“Well Zak, it’s kind of like this. I want to ‘officially’ ask Ciara out to the dance at the winter retreat.”

Whoa, can’t say I saw this one coming! Ciara is going to be doing back flips when she hears about this! In fact, this could work well in my favour! Maybe I can spin this so that I make her think that I played a part in this by constantly dropping her name when I’m with Tyler!

“Really? But..”

“But what?”

“Before I ask her out to the dance, I thought I’d ask her out to catch a movie or something tonight. You know, just to get to know her a little more so that I’m asking her out for the right reasons.”

And just as I’m about to get the low down on how this all came about Ciara walks up to us.

“Hey Tyler! So, you wanted to ask me something? Tyler? You okay? You look a little, well um.. Out of it.”

Ciara takes a seat next to Tyler.

“Uh yeah, I’m fine. It’s just that..”

I can pretty much guess that having me standing here isn’t making it any easier on Tyler.

“Hey guys? I gotta get going, you know how Dr. Brady doesn’t like it when I’m late for practice!”

I quickly make my way across the courtyard and round the corner to the bike racks. I flip a switch on my armband communicator and my ten-speed bike transforms into a supped-up high performance motorcycle that would make even the most hardened die-hard superheroes jealous. Thank you Dr. Brady!

I didn’t have to stand around with Tyler and Ciara. I already have a pretty good idea of how this is going to turn out since, after all, Ciara has had a crush on Tyler since junior high and now that Tyler is going to ‘ask her out’, she is so, of course going to say yes. As I get onto my bike and ride out I’m just a little depressed that this winter retreat is going to suck. Mainly because Tyler and I hung out together during the last winter retreat at my place playing video games, chatting but pretty much just hanging out chilling. Man it’s going to suck being alone for a week.

CHAPTER TWO

I’m lost in my thoughts when I suddenly hear a distress call on my bike’s police scanner.

“Calling all units in the mid-town area, Officer Dent is requesting immediate back up!”

Mid-town? Isn’t that where the mall is? Hmm. I wonder what Officer Dent is doing over there. Probably a crowd control thing. I remember hearing about the new ‘The Squeegits’ music CD coming out this week. I honestly didn’t think the band was that popular. But still, I’d better just swing by and take a look. Besides, any brownie points I can accumulate now would be most beneficial before I go and see Dr. Brady. That and I’m sure an autographed CD from his favourite boy band, even if he won’t publicly admit it, will smooth things over when he finds out I’ve been hanging out with Torrance instead of patrolling the streets like he wants me to do after school.

As I get closer to the mall I see what appears to be a police barricade. Interestingly enough, I also see a lot of press mixed with the police behind the barricade. And look! There’s Officer Dent trying to control the crowd! Things never go to well for him with crowd control. Who knows? Maybe it just ain’t his thing. Wait, there drawing there guns and shooting! What the heck is going on?

Suddenly, various police officers and news reporters dive for cover as a laser beam cuts through the crowd and hits a limo attempting to drive off! I watch as the limo sputters and dies. This looks like a text-book case of ‘super-villain-snatching-movie-star-for money-scenario’. I ran into this scenario a while back when I was still a part of the society of super heroes. You see, lightning lad and myself were on patrol duty when some idiot of a super villain decided to try to use his robot and do a snatch and grab of this movie star. Luckily for her we were in the area. It went down sort of like what I’m going through now. The only difference? Well, right now I a) don’t have any super powers and b) lightning lad is now captain lightning and he’s flying solo these days.

I rev the throttle; hop the curb to the parking lot and speed towards the robot. I quickly use the ‘net gun’ attachment Dr. Brady installed in my armband communicator to take down the robot. I’m sure Dr. Brady will pleased to know it worked.

With the robot knocked down I place myself between the robot and the police barricade. From what I’ve learned about fighting super villains the moment you give them multiple targets they will always go with the newest target that comes into the mix. Now, not to rain on their parade but every rookie (be it a super hero or villain) knows that you should take down your ‘immediate’ target before engaging a ‘new’ target. Now he has the police and me to worry about! Wait a sec, what am I thinking! Police nothing! Now, he only has me to worry about! And come to think of it, looking at this robot, well, it just kind of sucks. I mean, look at it! One eye, black steel construction, laser beam emitters coming out of the palm of the hands! Can we get any more cliché? I swear, sometimes I think all ‘evil- mad scientist’ get their plans from the same place or something along those lines. That would explain the lack of variations of the robots I’m fighting these days. Just once, just once! I would like to fight a robot that had originality to it!

CHAPTER THREE

In shock, Dr. Raine spews out his smoothie all over the monitor. He quickly wipes off the smoothie from the monitor.

“Can it be! Do my eyes deceive me! Forget getting him at the winter retreat let’s just do it now!” Dr. Raine pushes a button on his console and speaks into it.

“Warren, I want you to max out your power levels and take out Zak now!” On the monitor Dr. Raine watches as Warren re-allocates power to his eye beam. The eye and hand beam energy indicator now reads that the power is at a hundred and eighty percent.

Dr. Raine’s robot has now gotten up and broken free of the net. The robot’s eyes flashes a bright crimson red as it raises its arms at Zak. And all the while Zak just stands there.

Dr. Raine looks curiously at the monitor. He can’t figure out why would Zak just sit on his bike?

“What could Zak be doing? I’m sure he gets the idea that my robot is about to shoot him. Yet, he just stands there? What am I missing? Oh well, you know what they say, ‘when opportunity knocks, answer it!’”

Dr. Raine sits there and watches as the robot prepares to fire. Dr. Raine watches with great anticipation as the robot’s targeting circle locks onto Zak. The monitor lights up with a message indicating that the robot is about to ‘commence’ it’s firing sequence.

And that’s when everything goes wrong. Suddenly time slows to a crawl as Dr. Raine notices that the entire image on the monitor starts to tilt to the right as if the robot was being knocked over. Worst of all, the laser beam misses Zak by a mile! Instead of hitting Zak, it totally demolishes the food court behind him!

“WHAT! How’s this possible! NO! Not the food court! Drat! I loved that smoothie shop! Come to think of it, that was the only smoothie shop near work! Great, now where am I going to go when I need to satisfy that mid afternoon smoothie craving?”

Suddenly, another monitor lights up. Torrance’s face shows up on the screen.

“Dad? You in there?”

Dr. Raine quickly adjusts his composure to look like the sweet lovable, caring dad that his daughter thinks he is.

“Yes sweety? What is it?”

“Sorry to bother you dad, but you promised to take me to your work place so I can make some copies of the flyers for the winter retreat?”

Dr. Raine looks down at his watch and realizes that he has spent far too much time down in his lab.

“Sure, I’ll be right there. Just make sure you pack up all your discs and stuff!”

“Thanks dad! You’re the greatest!”

Dr. Raine clicks off the monitor with Torrance’s image on it before turning his attention back to the main monitor with Zak’s image on it. Though, now the image is totally tilted to one side.

“You may have foiled my plans today, but I’ll get you yet Zak, just you wait!” Dr. Raine hits a button on his control console.

“Warren? Activate ‘stealth-return’ program.”

With that said Dr. Raine turns off the monitor and the lights while heading out of his lab. After all, he does have a promise to his daughter to keep!

CHAPTER FOUR

I sit there looking at Leo hovering a few feet in front of me. He could not have cut it any closer! If he had come a moment later in knocking over the robot, I probably would have more than likely have been blasted instead of the mall! Well, for the most part, at least some good came out of this; at least that lame food court got toasted. Now the city definitely has to rebuild it!

“Leo, what took you so long?”

“I had to save the game. If I didn’t save it and let it run it would ruin my chance to get the ‘special’ ending for the game.”

Why, oh why did I have to get the defective model robot from the society of super heroes? Of all the robots to get; I get a robot that is addicted to video games! Worse yet, he chooses to ‘save’ the video game over ‘saving’ me!

“Leo, a video game is just that, a GAME!”

“But, if I didn’t save it the ‘game timer’ would keep on running. If it kept running, I would never be able to see the ‘secret ending’.” Leo then hovers off, probably going back home to load his game from the ‘last saved’ position.

“Leo! Don’t you float away from me! I’m warning you, I’m going to hide that game console when I get back!” But Leo continues to float away. I definitely need to have his AI chip checked out. I swear, he sometimes behaves more like a two year old than a robotic sidekick!

Now back to more important matters. I should see if I can pull some kind of remote control transponder code off of this robot. If I’m lucky, Dr. Brady will be able to make some kind of tracking device for me so I can track down the person (or persons) controlling the robot. I get off of my bike and start to walk toward the robot when officer Dent puts his hand on my shoulder.

“We’ll take it from here Zak, you just stay right here and sit tight.”

“But, I was the one that took down the robot! Shouldn’t I be the one that...”

“Sorry, but this is a matter that should be handled by the ‘adults’.”

And suddenly Officer Dent and a whole slew of police officers and a camera crew rush past me. That’s gratitude for you! I do all of the work and now he gets all of the glory. I watch as the group of police officers cautiously approaches the knocked down robot. And that’s when I notice that the eyes have started to glow!

“Officer Dent! Look out!” I scream.

But it’s too late. Suddenly, several panels on the robots body pop open and spew out black smoke! I raise my armband communicator and get ready to fire another net round; but I just can’t see anything in that smoke cloud. Just as the smoke starts to clear, I make out what sounds like a mini-jet engine warming up. And then in a heartbeat, I see the robot blast off into the sky.

Well, so much for examining the robot up close. In any case I think now would be the best time for me to leave. After all, Officer Dent did say that this was a matter to be handled by ‘the adults’.

CHAPTER FIVE

I’m only an hour late. I’m sure Dr. Brady won’t be too ticked off. After all I did save some VIP in that stretch limo, right? Who am I kidding! The man is going to be royally ticked off! Yeah, I saved the day. But I took out the food court in the process, not that he was too crazy about the place either, mind you. But he always frowns when I cause any type of property damage. Especially if it’s that much property damage. Like the time I fought the ‘clay- meister’ and his minions of dough at the ‘Cineplex 30’ (thirty movie theatres inside on convenient location!). Yeah I won the battle all right. But, by the time it was over, I had taken out half of the Cineplex. Until the Cineplex was repaired the running joke in town was “Hey, You wanna go to the Cineplex 15 tomorrow?”

As I get to his front door I notice that there is a piece of paper taped to it. The paper reads: “I’m in the garage.”

Figures, you know when Dr. Brady isn’t at school teaching science and biology to us kids he can be usually found in his garage working on some type of new toy for me to use against super villains. Well, actually there use to be three places: school, garage and the food court at the mall. But after today it’s going to be: school and the garage. The only thing he has going for him is that his wife is really cool. I mean, I can’t believe that she puts up with his weird behaviour, school, work, work, and school. That’s his entire life. Then again that’s mine as well. Great, I’m becoming just like Dr. Brady!

I go to the side entrance of the garage door to find another note: “Come in, door is open.” Hmm, I guess he is expecting me.

I push open the door slowly and see Dr. Brady’s back facing me. He’s hunched over a lab table, probably working on some new toy for my armband communicator. I swear, I still haven’t used the other ninety-five ‘improvements’ he put in! In any case, I think I’ll start off with the good news and then parlay it into the ‘bad news’.

“Hey Dr. Brady, sorry I’m late I was on my way here and the thing was that I happened to catch a dispatch on the police scanner about a robot wreaking havoc at the mall.”

And Dr. Brady continues to tinker on his workbench. What’s up with that? Well, maybe if I tell I finally used the ‘net’ option on my communicator that’ll make him take notice of me! That or he has earplugs on again. Last time that happened, I was talking for like, fifteen minutes before he pulled them off and was surprised to see me standing there. So I guess I should be a little louder.

“The best part was I stopped the robot by using that new ‘net’ option you put in. I have to say that’s one pretty useful improvement!” Heck, if I said it any louder I think the neighbours would hear me!

“I’m glad you like it Zak!”

Funny, I could’ve just sworn that sounded like... “Mrs. Brady?”

And that’s when Dr. Brady swivels around to reveal, Mrs. Brady! I’m at a loss for words at this moment.

I’ve never really had the wind knocked out of me before, but I’ve heard stories from my fellow super heroes about fighting really tough super villains like ‘mad-red’ and getting hit in the gut and having the wind knocked out of them. They say you get really disorientated and have to sit down. I think I’m going to need to sit down now.

CHAPTER SIX

Mrs. Brady walks over to me and grabs my arm while examining the armband communicator.

“I’m glad you like it, it took me and Wyatt several days to work out all of the bugs.”

“Wyatt?” I quickly pull my arm away from Mrs. Brady.

“Wyatt is my ‘husband’s’ first name.”

“Oh, right. Sorry, forgot about that.”

“Quite all right.” Mrs. Brady grabs my arm once more.

“After all, I’ve called him ‘Dr. Brady’ for several years now that I literally almost forgot he even had a first name!”

I pull my arm away from her again. Before she goes around modifying the armband in anyway I just have to know where Dr. Brady is.

“If you don’t mind me asking, where is Dr. Brady?”

“A few members of the Society of Super heroes wanted him to go on a secret mission with them as their ‘scientific observer’.”

“Do you know when he will be back?”

“Sorry, but the society is really secretive. I’m sure you’ve had your share of ‘secrets’ as well. Since, after all, you yourself use to be a superhero.”

Mrs. Brady does have a point there. There have been plenty of times where I’ve gone on missions with various members of the Society of Superheroes and I just couldn’t tell anyone about what I was doing. Not even my own mother!

Mrs. Brady once again grabs my arm, but this time hooks up a computer cable to a socket my armband. I’ve always wondered what that socket was there for.

“Now, let’s have another look at that armband shall we? According to the data read out I see you haven’t tried out the flame gun option nor have you tried out the Electro shock option! I’m quite hurt, Wyatt spent quite some time developing that one!”