Stones (Data) (35 page)

The short man releases his grip, takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Then he explodes, grabbing the handle of the knife, pulling it out of the other man’s hand, gripping Matt’s shirt again and pressing the point of the dagger up against Matt’s throat.

A warm trickle of blood snakes down Matt’s neck.

“Yoshi’s dagger. He always carries it with him. Where did you get it?” The little man has the look of fire in his eyes.

“I found it up in the mountains.” Matt has difficulty speaking with the point pressing into his skin. “Outside of Otaru.”

The little man shakes his head. “You’d have to kill Yoshi to get this from him.” A wave of rage rises up in his voice. “He followed you to the mountain. Watched you. He’s the best at tailing people, the most quiet, almost invisible. Never gets caught. He was closing in, getting ready to bring you to us. Then we got a message from his jax.” The man’s bloodshot eyes look into Matt’s face.

With slow, deliberate movements, the short man withdraws the dagger from Matt’s throat and steps back. As his eyes move to the bed, he motions to it with his chin. The tall thug behind Matt grabs his arms and forces him onto the bed where the Stone is lying. As if previously choreographed, the more muscular one near the window, already named Big Buddha inside Matt’s head, springs forward and holds down Matt’s legs. He feels the Stone jabbing him between his shoulder blades.

The ringleader pulls a jax out of his suit pocket and stands over Matt. “Look.” He commands. “This is what you did to Yoshi.”

A holo bluescreen jumps above the jax and unfolds in the air into a circle. As video begins to play, Matt stares at a view of the clearing up on the mountain where he had the vision. Through tree trunks and weeds, he watches himself sitting in a lotus position, on top of a boulder.

The heavy voice of a narrator, mumbling in gutter Japanese, begins to speak in the background.

“What is this idiot American doing?” The voice chuckles. “I’ll jump him when he comes down from the rock. He looks like a real wimp, no match for my blade. When I have him, I’ll send you a message. Meet me at the bottom with the car.”

There’s the sound of blowing wind. The video image becomes unstable, moving back and forth past Matt.

“
Kuso
,” the voice curses. “The ground is shaking. Strange time for an earthquake.”

With the video image focused on Matt, a small point of white light appears two meters over his head. It lengthens into a bright, vertical line and then widens into a cylinder.

“What the…”

From the bed, Matt looks up into the holo of the jax, transfixed by the unfolding scene. It brings back the experience with the Woman in all its mystery.

The cylinder grows more intensely white.

“Too bright. Light everywhere. Can’t see.”

The next instant, the cylinder explodes with consuming luminosity.

There is silence for a full half minute. The video screen looks as if it’s been thrown into the sun.

“My eyes. My face. Burning. Stop the burning. Help. Please help.” The voice screams.

The holo screen goes black. The video function no longer works, but sound is still coming through. There’s a rush of movement through weeds and tree branches, the sound of snapping twigs and shoes stumbling down a dirt trail. Ripping clothing. Over and over, the voice screams the same words.

“Burning. Burning. Stop the burning.”

Matt hears a thud, as if the jax has been dropped to the ground. The moaning and sound of broken branches moves off into the distance. Then silence.

“I’m going to ask you one more time. What did you
do
to Yoshi?” The little man standing over Matt looks down with a mixture of torment and rage on his face. “He was my
senpai
, my friend. He taught me everything I know. Like a father.” He reaches his hand into the suit coat and takes out a small black pistol.

Matt does not respond. His mind is a raging storm as he struggles to find the same mental location that allowed him to stop time on the mountain, the place he found again on the street when he rushed in front of the car to save the child. He feels himself getting closer.

And then he is on the beach, standing next to his mother, the ocean surf in his ears.

The little Yakuza man stands over Matt and presses the warm steel of the barrel against Matt’s forehead. “You’re lucky,
gaijin
scum. They forbid us to kill you.” He pulls a long black cylinder out of the other side of his suit jacket and slowly screws it into the tip of the barrel. “But they didn’t say anything about
hurting
you.” The point goes deep into Matt’s cheek. Then the man scrapes it down Matt’s chin, along his neck and onto his chest, leaving a path of red on Matt’s skin. Beads of blood pop up here and there, like a perforated line.

“I didn’t do anything to Yoshi.” Matt looks up, trying to buy time until his mind can figure out how to use the Stone.

“Then what happened on the mountain?”

“I’m not sure.”

The little man manually cocks the pistol. “You used a bomb, didn’t you? Some kind of phosphorus explosive.” He presses the tip against Matt’s chest hard enough to leave a bruise. “You burned him real bad before he died.”

Matt shakes his head. “He’s not dead! I saw him before I left. That’s when I got the dagger.” He has almost found the spot in his mind, like before.

Letting up on the pistol, the man nods. “So that’s when you killed him?” The tip comes down hard on Matt’s sternum.

“Please stop.”

“Funny. Those were Yoshi’s last words, too.” The man works his way down Matt’s body with the point of the barrel. He comes to Matt’s belly and hesitates for a moment. Then he moves straight down a few more inches. “I’ve always wanted to do this.” He raises his eyebrows as if talking to himself.

The man holding down Matt’s legs shifts his weight. “Boss won’t like it. Too messy.”

“You’re right.” With a frown, the little man moves the barrel of the gun lower onto Matt’s right thigh, twists the corner of his mouth. “No, that would be too easy.”

Letting his eyes drop down, Matt begins to silently count breaths backward from ten. He feels the sensation of the tip of the barrel slide down his leg, like a viper deciding where to take the first bit, until it goes over and past his kneecap to the top of his shins. It stops and comes back to the kneecap.

“Perfect,” the voice above him grunts. “Make him hurt. For Yoshi.”

The hands holding his ankles and shoulders tighten their grip. His eyes flip open. “Don’t.”

Two faces smile at him, relaxed and content. The sound of quiet surf grows louder in his ears. A muffled pop, like slipping the cork off a champagne bottle, causes the pistol to jump up.

An electric jolt shoots through Matt’s leg, awakening every nerve in his body. The barrel of the gun is still pointed at his knee, and a wisp of smoke curls out of the tip. As the jolt dissipates, warmth spreads through his leg followed by a dull and growing storm of pain, a wave rising up out of blackness.

The two men release their grip on his wrists and ankles and stand back.

A wave of agony crashes down on Matt. He takes a gulp of air and tries to push it back, but it rolls over him and consumes his body. An involuntary yell rips through his throat. His injured leg descends into a hell of spasms and cramps while the muscles in the rest of his body twitch and jerk. Struggling to breathe, he looks up.

All three of the Yakuza thugs bellow out in laughter.

“He won’t go anywhere now.” The pygmy Yakuza screws off the silencer and slips the gun back into his shoulder holster. He points to the tall man. “Come with me. We need to go see the boss.” As he moves past Matt, he stops and turns to face the one Matt mentally calls Big Buddha. “Tomo-chan, you stay here and make sure he doesn’t try to go anywhere. We’ll be back with the others in a minute.” They walk out the door and slam it shut, leaving Matt alone with the Buddha.

The pain in Matt’s leg transforms from a chaotic storm into something sharp, vicious, biting. He tries to sit up and get a better view of his knee but Big Buddha lands a kick on his side. Reaching a hand down his leg, there is warm wetness everywhere. When he pulls it back, his fingers are covered with blood.

Sweat beads up on his forehead and drips into his eyes.

As his mind shifts into panic mode, Matt feels reality begin to fade, like fingers slowly losing their grip on a trapeze bar high above the ground. Thoughts become a blur. Confusion and despair start to nibble around the edges. It’s impossible to concentrate on a single idea or emotion, like trying to focus on a single spoke of a spinning wheel. He is sliding down an icy slope, fighting for a hand hold, fighting for a single point of reference to grasp and steady his mind. And then it comes.

Dad, you were right. Right about everything.

Thoughts of his father turn to his mother. He closes his eyes, slows his breathing and concentrates on that day at the beach. He imagines himself standing next to her, holding her hand, watching the waves wash in, looking up into her face. He can feel the warm sand between his toes. The perfection of the world. All things at rest. Nothing wanting. Vibrant clarity and joy.

Warmth spreads between his shoulder blades where the Stone lays. The sharp pain in his leg passes through him and trails off as the distant sound of a beating surf plays louder and louder in his ears.

Matt opens his eyes and sees Big Buddha standing over him, unmoving, still as a rock. Time has slowed down. Keeping his mind focused on the image of his mother and the beach, he pulls himself up to a sitting position, and then reaches back and grabs the Stone with his right hand. A large bloodstain is already forming on the bed beneath his knee. Lifting up his cargo pants to get a clearer view of the damage, the open wound is swimming in blood and tissue. Little white flecks float around in it, and he takes that to be part of the shattered bone. He probes gently around the wound with the tip of a finger. There is no hint of pain or discomfort.

For a long time, he stares at the wound, contemplating what to do. With no pain and no passage of time, all sense of urgency and panic melt away, washed clean by the sound of an invisible ocean. He bends the knee and finds that it moves, but with an unsettling sound of bone grinding on bone. For now there’s no pain, but that may be because time has slowed down. He’ll have to face a fresh onslaught when he returns to normal time.

The Stone in his right hand starts to turn milky white and triggers another thought in his mind.

If the Yakuza thugs found him, they might also have found Professor Yamamoto. Perhaps that’s why he sent Matt a full copy of his research notes on the Stones.

A sense of urgency to get back to the professor’s office weighs on his mind. For a moment, the image of that day at the beach with his mother slips away, and the low sound of buzzing cicadas just outside the window creeps back into his ears.

Big Buddha starts to move sluggishly, like a monster unthawed from the Arctic ice. He looks down at Matt and raises his eyebrows in slow motion. There’s surprise and a hint of confusion in his eyes when he sees Matt sitting up on the bed. The foot rises to kick him again.

Letting his eyelids drop down, Matt focuses and finds the image of his mother on the beach. The stillness comes back, and Big Buddha’s movements grind to a halt.

He seems to be getting better at controlling the Stone.

While maintaining his mother’s image in his mind, Matt turns his attention back to the wounded knee. As he stares at it, he recalls a college anatomy class. The knee is a complicated collection of bones, muscles, ligaments, cartilage and blood vessels. Doctors spend years understanding its nuances and perfecting their ability to heal it.

Matt doesn’t have years.

Pushing back the rising fear, he lets his feelings of helplessness go and examines the knee again out of sheer curiosity, opening his mind, waiting for clarity. It’s like teasing out a knot, strand by strand. At first, there’s no progress.

Then, in a burst of understanding, he sees the knee, not as a mechanical system of separate parts, each broken down into smaller and smaller sub-components, but as an organic whole, comprehending its entirety from the top, bottom and sides simultaneously. A gasp rises in his throat as the beauty and simplicity of its structure becomes clear. The exact nature of the wound is laid open before him.

And something else becomes clear. He can fix it.

He puts the white Stone down on the bed and stretches both hands out to the knee, covering it with his palms. In his mind, he reorganizes the image of the knee into a perfect whole until it feels right and complete. Then he pulls his hands away and looks at it again. The wound is gone. He opens the palm of his right hand and gazes down at the bullet.

Carefully, gingerly, he stands on his feet, bending and straightening both knees. They work to perfection. He grabs his backpack, slips the jax and the Stone into his pockets and rushes out the door, still holding on to the image of his mother on the beach and the sound of the surf.

All he can think about is getting to Professor Yamamoto’s office as soon as possible.

When he stands a few feet from the closed office door, time is still stopped. Not wanting to alarm the professor by suddenly appearing, he relaxes his mind and completely lets go of the image of his mother. As if descending suddenly from the sky, the sound of crying cicadas jumps back into his ears.

He knocks on the door. A long moment passes.

“Come in.” It’s the familiar voice of Professor Yamamoto. Yet something feels different. Matt puts his hand on the door and steps in as it opens.

There is the stench of burning sulfur. An immediate sense of danger floods his chest.

The office is full of people.

Before he can react, out of the corner of his eye, a tiny yellow dot flies at him like a swift moving mosquito and stings his neck. A wave of relaxation surges through his body. He struggles to find the image of his mother on the beach again, but it’s like swimming through honey. His arms and legs go limp and his eyes trace a line from floor to ceiling as he twists and falls.