New Fiction: Car JACKED, Book 2 of The Origin Dime Chronicles, Episode 1 with intro from book 1

Introduction from book one: Jack Kelly has just turned 21. On his
birthday, he inherited The Mad Cow Burger Shack, from his dad's
estate. The Mad Cow, he discovered, was positioned directly over a
multidimensional vortex that allowed people and things to travel
between dimensions.

In addition, Jack has the abilities of an Aedapt, allowing him to jump
between dimensions, without a vortex, and giving him the skills of a
human chameleon. He can also "author" new futures, simply by imagining things. He is the last of his kind in the Original Dimension, or
Origin Dime.

The Origin Dime is under attack by a group known as the Shadoe
Librarians, a race of spore born wraiths that lack the ability to
invent or imagine. They intend to enslave the human race (turning them
into mind controlled ghouls known as "noshers") and change the Origin
Dime into a desolate shadow land. Jack has been recruited by a group known as the Imagoes, to stop them.

His recruiters are members of the Access Network Guardians Extra-dimensional Legionnaires, AKA "Angels" and he's been traveling with a leprechaun accused of bank robbery. He and an Aedapt girl, Madison, are searching for a safe haven when they stop at a tollbooth along a transdimensional toll road.

Jack struggled hard against the two noshers. One stood on each side of the wooden chair as they forced him into it. A third stood behind him. He could feel the hard edges of the zip ties cut into his wrists as they bound his hands behind the back of the chair.

Across the room, just four feet away, Madison was suffering the same fate. They strapped her elbows to the sides of her chair. Then her ankles, and finally one of them pulled a thick black hood down over Madison’s head. He’d only known the girl for a day but what happened to her already mattered to him more than his own safety.

Jack pulled against the chair, his elbows and ankles seemed securely fastened. “Damn it! Let her go,” he screamed. “I have the key; I’m the one you need. Let her go and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” He meant it, the Imagos, the Shadoes; it wasn’t his fight.

Just two nights ago, Jack had been planning a trip to Vegas to celebrate his twenty-first birthday, now he was being held hostage by trans-dimensional, mind-controlled thugs over something he barely had anything to do with, except being born an Aedapt, a gift he didn’t fully understand.

The nosher behind Jack laughed. Jack recognized the voice from a night that felt years ago. It was Jake. This was the one that had crawled in through the drive-thru window of his restaurant, The Mad Cow Burger Shack, the night his life got turned upside down to begin with.

This was the one Jack had recently left in a ditch in a puddle of his own puke after stealing back a thumb drive from him that Jack now had dangling from a string inside his shirt.

His laugh moved around Jack on the right, until the familiar ghostly face and stringy black hair was inches from his nose. “It’s not the key we’re looking for Jack! We copied that. Did you think I just fell into your lap? No! They wanted you to catch me, get the key back even.”

The nosher’s icy breath hit Jack in the face. “No, there’s a problem, see,” the nosher hissed. “Jack’s daddy was a bad boy. He encrypted the key!” This last came out as a growl.

Jack smiled, “Well, I guess your SOL then, because my father has been dead for a long time. So, unless you have a plan that includes bringing him back from…” Jack’s ears rang as the nosher’s hand came down hard across his face, right to left.

The whole side of his head lit up with pain. Tears clouded his eyes as he watched one of the noshers slip a giant zip tie, like the ones he’d seen on air-conditioning ducts, around Madison’s neck and slowly begin to tighten it.

“Now Jack,” Jake moved to his left side, painfully grabbing Jack’s jaw and pointing it toward Madison. “Unless you’d like to see what happens when we tighten that tie,” he whispered. “You’re going to find your father.”

Jack responded through gritted teeth, “Just exactly how am I supposed to do that?” he asked. “I haven’t seen or heard from my father since his funeral twelve years ago.”

“Haaa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaa!” the nosher cackled. “Bring her in,” he said. One of the noshers opened the door and paraded the uniformed tollbooth attendant into the room, a little worse for wear. She looked angry, but not scared.

“It seems you owe us a toll, my little friend,” Jake said. “My friend Agnes here has been filling us in on it.”

“I’m sorry about this Mr. Kelly,” she said to Jack, “I’m afraid I had no choice but to get you out of your car.”

When he, and Madison had arrived from their escape down an inter dimensional toll road, in a Volkswagen Rabbit called ALICE, capable of jumping between dimensions, the noshers had been waiting for them at the tollbooth. Jack had no idea how they had known.

As Jack and Madison exited the car, they pounced. They had taken the toll agent into another room, and brought Jack and Madison here, to the back room of the tollbooth.

The small woman held a slightly crumpled manila folder clasped tightly in her hands, at her waist. Jake took the corner of the document gently at first, and then finally ripped it from Agnes’ grip. Agnes spit in his face.
“Wait!” Jake said, stopping another nosher from delivering a vicious slap to the toll attendant’s face. “We may have a use for her.”

He flipped the folder open and held up what looked like an enlarged mug shot of a man. Jack squinted; he did not recognize the face. He laughed. “I guess the joke really is on you. That’s not my father.”

Jake’s laugh at this response caught Jack off guard. He glared at the nosher. “So, do you want to tell me what you want? Or are we going to just laugh at each other all day?”

“You, my friend, will not be laughing.” Jake snapped his fingers. The nosher who held the end of the zip tie around Madison’s neck tensed, pulling just slightly. The girl gasped. “This beautiful headshot is of Xander Hollofield, a criminal mastermind. They want you to retrieve him. There is a bounty on his head. That was to be your toll.”

“Why?” Jack asked. His eyes never left Madison, who was very still now.

“Jack, pay attention,” Jake said. “With every tug on that tie, it becomes a little bit tighter, and guess what? It doesn’t –ever— loosen. So, your friend over there has a smaller airway than she did two minutes ago. And, every time you piss me off, we will tighten it the slightest bit, until, even if we untied her, she couldn’t stop herself from suffocating, because –repeat after me- it doesn’t get…”

The nosher looked at Jack and raised his eyebrows in a question.

“Looser!” Jack said. “I get it, but what I don’t get is how I’m supposed to find this guy. I’ve never seen him. I don’t know him, or anyone who does.”

The nosher chuckled again, “That’s where you’re wrong. See, this criminal mastermind specializes in one type of theft; bank vault gold.”

“Phineas,” Jack whispered. It had to be. Phineas must know this guy.

“Clever boy, Jack,” Jake purred. “Can you put the rest of the pieces together? Or should I have it tattooed across your forehead?”

Jack struggled to focus; his ears were still ringing. Unless he held his head just right, he was starting to see two of everything. “Phineas knows Hollofield, and Hollofield must know something about my father?”

The nosher began to clap, slowly “Bravo, nicely done, give Jack a hand, boys.” He glared around the room until the other noshers clapped along with him. Sarcasm echoed in each clap.

“Set her free and I’ll do it,” Jack said.

“Rule number one, Jack; don’t attempt to negotiate without any leverage.” Jake snapped his fingers and the nosher snugged the zip tie just a bit more. “You’ll do it.”

Jake reached out a hand, and a pair of noshers brought a small table and set it in front of him. He placed the picture of the bank robber on the table and slid it over to Jack.

“Now, listen close, it’s not your father, per se, that we need. It is what he knows that we want. You are going to find it and hand it over to me or your friend, will Zip Die!”

The noshers howled with laughter at Jake’s joke. He raised a hand, and they stopped immediately.

The room went black as Jack felt a heavy bag slide down over his head.