Stones (Data) (34 page)

A group of schoolgirls in their sailor uniforms stare down, hands over their mouths. From the looks on their faces, he gathers that his appearance on the sidewalk is extraordinarily strange. With the young boy still on top, he smiles up at them and gives an awkward wave of his hand.

The child’s eyes find Matt and burst into tears.

He sets the boy on his feet, the rigid backpack still on the tiny shoulders, pats him on the head, and stands up. “Make sure you look both ways before crossing the street next time.”

Big watery eyes stare up at him, nodding in agreement.

As they talk, a crowd gathers. Jaxes slip out of dozens of pockets and begin taking video of him. A policeman approaches.

As the man in uniform gets within a couple of body lengths, Matt’s fear of public authority figures kicks in. Jumping to his feet, he wades through the tangle of bodies. Hands reach out to touch his shirt. A woman asks him to stop.

When he breaks free from the crowd, he shifts into flight mode and sprints around the corner down a side street. After a few strides, he cuts to the right down another narrow street and continues in a zig-zag fashion to the train station, trying to avoid attention and leaving behind the few stragglers following him. Five minutes later, he slips through the front entrance to find it empty except for a bent old man with a hunchback sweeping the floor. There’s a lone plastic seat in the far corner close to the platform. He drops the backpack and falls into the chair to catch his breath.

The little boy and the black Mercedes wander back into his mind, and he can’t escape the conclusion that he saw them in the vision on the mountain an hour before the incident.

Matt fishes the Stone out of his side pocket and holds it up level with his eye. It had shown him the future, a possible future, in which the little boy was killed. But that future had been avoided when Matt intervened and snatched him away from the speeding Mercedes.

Something else happened up on the mountain and down on the street. There was the dagger flying at him through the air and the car only meters away from killing a small child. Both of them stopped when the sense of imminent danger triggered a strong reaction within him. It was as if time slowed down when his emotions reached out for it.

It must have been the Stone. Perhaps he could test it.

With the Stone weighing heavy in his right hand, he contemplates what to do. Closing his eyes in concentration, he takes the jax out of a pocket on his left thigh and tosses it toward the ceiling. Then he tightens his chest and holds his breath. The jax arcs up into the air. For a few seconds, it is utterly quiet inside the station.

A piercing series of rings echoes through the station as the jax clatters to the ground like a jewel dropped from the sky. It comes to rest a few meters from Matt’s feet.

He looks up and sees the old man starring at him, slack-jawed. The watery eyes drift up to the bluescreen on the opposite wall and back to Matt.

Following the old man’s eyes, Matt notices the news playing on the bluescreen. It shows Matt lying on a sidewalk with a small child balanced on his chest. People, mostly schoolgirls, are gathered around, hands up to their mouths, staring down at the young man and the boy. Some of them are crying. A caption scrolls by at the bottom of the screen.

Man Mysteriously Saves a Child from Being Hit by a Car and then Disappears.

A video of the entire event, complete with a screenshot of his face, clothing and backpack, is already on the Mesh.

The train going back to Sapporo pulls into the station and stops. There’s a brief announcement. Matt stands up and walks to the platform, picking his jax off the floor on the way. He smiles and winks at the old man as he walks by.

As soon as he boards the train, Matt slips into a restroom and turns his shirt inside out. His shirts, like all the rest of his wardrobe, are fully reversible. It’s a double blessing. He needs fewer clothes, and it comes in handy when trying to quickly change his appearance to avoid detection. He bunches his hair up on the top of his head, securing it with a miniature bungee cord for a
crazy gaijin
look. When he exits the restroom, he walks through the train cars until he finds one with only a few passengers. Then he finds a window seat near the door.

As he gazes out at the ocean, that day on the beach with his mom and dad comes back to mind. He feels the wind on his cheeks and the warm sand between his toes just as his mother’s hand slips into his.

The jax trembles next to his leg with an urgent message. Reaching into his pocket, it falls comfortably into his hand, and he pulls it out to look at the small bluescreen.

It’s a download of ten terabytes of data from Professor Yamamoto. The message is marked urgent.

Matt, here is all my research on the Magatama Stone. Keep it safe. Original memory crystal destroyed.

Strange. Why is Professor Yamamoto giving Matt all of the research? It’s great to have already earned his trust. Matt can’t wait to get back to his dorm room and start digging into it.

By the time he steps off the train at the University stop, video of the child’s rescue by the mysterious stranger has gone viral on the Mesh. Someone has uploaded the entire sequence as captured by a security camera outside the convenience store, but the grainy footage has been run through an enhancement algorithm that gives it nearly HD quality.

Matt stops and stares down at the holo screen above his jax.

A speeding car shoots into the frame just a few meters from the child. As he watches, a blue blur flies into the street, envelops the child and exits just before the Mercedes powers by and leaves the frame. The video backs up and replays with subtitles and analysis provided by an amateur French cinematographer who just posted it to the Mesh. It shows the video slowed down to 750 frames per second, and the results are clear. Matt runs into the street, scoops up the child and dives for the other side as the car stands still. There’s no jerkiness or blurring.

There’s a clear shot of Matt’s face. Anyone who knows Matt and sees the video will be able to identify him.

As he walks along, he accesses other videos that have surfaced in the last few minutes. There’s a bio-physics professor in Australia saying it’s all been faked because it’s not humanly possible to cross a street and grab a child in such a short span of time. The only other explanation, the professor says, would be a supernatural one.

Eyewitness accounts attest that it really happened, just as shown on the Mesh. No tricks.

By the time Matt steps onto the campus, the police have identified the driver of the black Mercedes and arrested him for reckless endangerment. His only excuse is that he was in the middle of heated negotiations with a Chinese manufacturer for the purchase of custom power converters and was closing the deal just as he shot past the 7-Eleven and almost killed the boy.

The police have already put out a public notice on the Mesh that they’re looking for the mysterious stranger that saved the child. It is all part of their investigation.

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Matt holds a hand up to his face as he walks briskly back to his dorm room. His disguise may work for now, but it is only a matter of time before someone tells the police that the mysterious stranger is a graduate student at Hokkaido University.

For an instant, he thinks about the Yakuza man back on the mountain and remembers that the man came to the University library. And where there is one, there may be more. Matt will need to be careful walking on campus and keep an eye out for Italian suits and sunglasses. Right now he just needs to get back to his room as soon as he can.

The hot afternoon air has already painted a film of sticky sweat on his forehead and neck. By the time Matt gets to the dorm building, his back is soaked. It’s already close to 3:00 in the afternoon, nearing the hottest part of the day.

Walking through the courtyard in front of the dorm, he passes under a row of cherry trees and breathes in deeply to taste their sweet fragrance. A thought jumps into his mind, and he lifts his face up to the sun and slowly opens his eyelids to find there’s no need to flinch or blink even though he’s staring directly at the fiery orb. He stands for a full minute and admires its shape and beauty, letting calmness pass through him.

As his eyelids drop down, he seems to slam into a wall of intense fatigue. By the time he walks into the dorm and down the long hall, all he can think of is getting back to his room, downing a drink of cool water and catching a short nap before going to Professor Yamamoto’s office.

Curiously, there’s a strange resistance in his body as he walks through the dark hallway to his door, as if the air is growing thicker and invisible rubber bands are holding him back. But he pushes forward like a fish swimming upstream, propelled by fatigue and thirst. There’s a subtle ringing sound in his ears, and the odor of sulfur hangs in the air. He wonders if someone was doing chemistry experiments in the dorm. Too tired to care, all he can think of is water and rest.

He reaches the door, ignoring the raging storm in his head, and presses the identity pad with his palm. The door swings open and he stumbles inside, eyes almost closed, letting it slam shut behind him. The backpack slips off his shoulders and thuds to the floor.

Two men in dark suits stand shoulder to shoulder next to the window with the shades drawn. The short one meets him with a cold stare, a thick cigar hanging limply from his lips. The other one keeps his arms crossed and says nothing. He senses movement from behind, but before he can react, something hard comes down on his head, and the room goes blurry.

He slips to the floor.

“W
hat happened to Yoshi?”

Matt looks up from the chair and recognizes the face of the short man yelling at him in guttural Japanese as one of the two men who stalked him at the airport in Tokyo. There’s another one standing just behind him with breath that reeks of cheap sake. He’s taller than Matt and must be the one who hit him.

A typical Yakuza ambush.

How could he be so stupid? Matt curses himself for coming straight back to his dorm room. He should have assumed there would be a welcoming party.

Yakuza always hunt in packs.

As he falls into survival mode, he sweeps the room with his eyes. There are three of them. The short, skinny one near the window, who first spoke to Matt and looks to be in charge. Another one with thick biceps and protruding pecs, standing like a Buddha statue, arms crossed over his chest. And the tall silent one behind Matt with alcohol breath. Sunglasses cover their eyes even though the lights aren’t on.

The short man at the window makes a half smile and opens his suit coat to reveal a black leather shoulder holster. “I’ll ask one more time. What did you do to Yoshi?” He raises his voice and stares into Matt’s eyes.

“Yoshi?” Matt stares back. “I don’t know any Yoshi.” His head still throbs from the blow from behind.

“Then you won’t mind if we check you.” The small man looks up and past Matt to the tall one behind him and moves his chin downward. “We keep Aki-chan drunk. You wouldn’t like him when he’s sober.”

A hand thrusts into Matt’s right side pocket. Foul breath rains down, causing him to wince. He feels the Stone being pulled out.

The large man moves forward and stands next to Matt, looking at the Stone in his hand. Then he lobs it to the skinny guy by the window who catches it in one hand.

The thin lips move. “What’s this?”

“Just a rock.” Matt feels a sudden and deep sense of loss as the skinny man tosses the Stone loosely up and down in his hand. Matt tries to focus his mind and concentrate, replaying the scene on the mountain. He slowed time before. He needs to do it again.

The man behind Matt moves to his left and plunges his hand into Matt’s left pocket. He shrieks with pain and jerks his hand out, bringing it up to his eyes. A thin line breaks through the skin of his palm and starts to flow with red. The big man licks the blood off and shoots a menacing glance down.

Matt slowly swallows, steeling his body for another blow.

The small man jumps forward, letting the cigar slip out of his mouth, and stops a foot from Matt’s face.

“American scum. Look, you’ve cut Aki-chan. What’s in your pocket?”

“Just a knife.”

The thin Yakuza goon looks at the big man standing next to Matt and motions down at the pocket with his eyes. Silently and carefully, the man sticks his bleeding hand back into Matt’s pants and takes out the dagger, dangling it by the tip of the blade between two fingers for the little man in front of Matt to see.

There is immediate recognition in the little man’s eyes. He tosses the Stone onto the bed, lunges forward and grabs Matt with both hands on the front of his shirt, jerking him up roughly and staring down.

“That’s Yoshi’s dagger. What did you do to him?” The short man roars and grits his teeth as his knuckles bit into Matt’s chest.

Matt breathes in the stinking breath. Drops of spit land on his face. “Like I said, I don’t know anyone named Yoshi.”