Stones (Data) (45 page)

According to the readout, there are four people speaking. Kent turns up the volume and feeds the sound into his earplugs so he can hear the voices as clearly as if he were in the same room. At first, it’s a confusion of multiple speakers, but by trial and error, he identifies a specific conversation and eliminates the unrelated voices.

“Any word from Ryzaard?” The blue screen on the box does an automatic voiceprint assay and says the speaker is a male, late teens, with a high probability that he’s from the South Pacific islands.

“Not yet.” This is a female voice, mid twenties, with a tone that registers Chinese ancestry. “He’s only been gone five hours. He’s good, but don’t expect him to get it done that quickly.”

“What if he doesn’t find the kid?”

“Don’t worry.” It’s the Chinese female again. “He will. You’ve seen how he operates. Everything planned to the Nth degree with multiple backups and contingencies.” She’s clearly in charge. “Have you seen him fail at
anything
yet?”

“Do you think Ryzaard will kill him? With his own hands?” The male voice laughs.

The female voice clears her throat. “That’s the plan. Without hesitation. He’s done it before. Unless there’s been a change.”

“What about the girl?”

“If he has to kill the boy, I’m sure she’ll be next.” The Chinese female doesn’t sound too upset about the prospect.

“Too bad. I thought she was cute, for a white girl.”

“I’d drop any ideas you might have. She’s totally out of your league. If the two of them don’t cooperate, they’ll end up in the concrete foundation of a new building down around Battery Street. Now get back to work and stop bothering me. Last I checked, you have a first name for the boy and a lead on his father. You better find out exactly who they are and everything about them before Ryzaard gets back.”

The hair rises on the back of Kent’s neck. He listens for another five minutes, but the human voices have gone silent.

The short conversation confirms his suspicions about corporate intrigue. Ryzaard, the new President and CEO of MX SciFin, is already plotting murder.

Kent smiles to himself. He’s struck gold on the first try.

A
fter an hour of running, Matt’s tired and dirty and sweaty. Ten or fifteen meters behind, he hears the constant sound of breaking branches and heavy breathing. Glancing backward, multiple pairs of yellow eyes burn in the darkness. The air feels moist, dead, heavy.

And then all goes still.

Up ahead, the forest seems to finally end. When he gets to the edge and breaks free of the trees, the same monolithic building he escaped from rises up before him, just as he left it, except for one thing. No sounds, no people.

Somehow, Matt has run in a circle and come back to where he started.

“Ryzaard!” he shouts up at the balcony. “I’m here.”

Silence.

Matt runs to the glass column under the building and stands beside it, not knowing what to do. It lights up and opens, just like before, and he enters. Closing around him, the column pushes him up into its interior as the color inside changes from dark blue to violet to pink. When the glass opens, he steps out into the same square room with a golden floor and walls. He runs to the open double doors and out onto the platform.

A single chandelier is lit up directly over his head. The great ballroom is empty, filled only with dim light and cold.

“Where are you?” he shouts into the emptiness.

No answer.

A sparkle of purple catches his eye. He looks closer and sees the ear implant, the one he cast away, lying on the floor a few paces away, misshapen and flat, like a crushed termite. A long red tendril, soaked in blood, is still attached. His fingers reach down to pick it up.

At the instant of contact, there’s a flash of light that leaves a green afterimage.

Matt tries to open his eyes, but he’s overcome by rolling waves of nausea broken up by explosions of pain into his back and up his vertebrae. It feels as if an unseen stranger is ramming a white-hot wire through his spinal cord, burning and tearing all the way from his coccyx to the base of his skull. He tries to reach around to feel the lower lumbar region, thinking that perhaps he’s been stabbed by a knife or shot, but his hand will not move. Finally, he figures out that he is sitting in a chair, strapped to it by his wrists and ankles.

His first instinct is to fight back the pain with controlled breathing, like he did before, but all he can do is wheeze and gasp for air. Summoning all his strength and focus, he manages to open one eye for a few seconds before it snaps shut.

It is enough to confirm the location. He is back in Professor Yamamoto’s office.

The muffled sound of surf beats on a distant beach. The sound becomes a lifeline, and he holds on to it like a sailor thrown overboard in a violent hurricane. After another long struggle, he manages to open a slit in his eye.

“Welcome back,” Ryzaard says, standing a few paces away in the middle of the office. The same Yakuza goons are at the door behind him, looking like wax figures. “You were gone a long time. It gave me a chance to tidy up a bit. There are just a couple of loose ends to take care of, and I’ll be on my way.” Ryzaard walks to the window where Professor Yamamoto sits motionless in a chair.

With every heartbeat, the pain pulses down Matt’s back in great surges of agony, leaving him unable to hold his head up for long. The nausea in his stomach reaches the breaking point, and he retches a pool of green liquid onto his lap. Rivers of stinging bile flow back down his throat. The raw intensity of it makes it impossible to string together coherent thoughts. His mind is mired down in a swamp of quicksand, unable to move.

One word manages to escape and floats somewhere in his brain.

Jessica…

He struggles to open his mouth and speak her name, but it’s as if an iron vice has been slapped on his jaw and holds it shut.

Matt feels the presence of Ryzaard coming close and standing over him, but he is unable to lift his head to look Ryzaard in the eye.

“Don’t worry about her,” Ryzaard says. “She’ll be coming with me. I’ll take good care of her.”

Ryzaard stops talking. Matt can hear him breathe.

And then Ryzaard’s knuckles smash against the side of Matt’s head.

But he hardly feels the blow.

More than that, he fears what Ryzaard said about Jessica. His back arches and strains against the tape around his wrists and ankles, knowing there’s no chance that he will break free. Explosions rake against the inside of his skull.

Ryzaard turns his back to Matt. “Your girl may still prove useful, don’t you think?” He chuckles. “Perhaps she can introduce me to your father.”

At the mention of his dad, Matt fights to get words out into the air. After sustained effort, he manages to force his lips and tongue to move enough to utter one word.

“Dead,” Matt says. One eye opens to see if Ryzaard bought the lie.

The sound of the surf is growing more distant.

“Good try. But I already know about Kent Tiberius Newmark.” Ryzaard pulls a jax out of a pocket and scans the bluescreen. “Graduated from Columbia Law School in the top five of his class. Went to work at Myers & Sullivan in Midtown Manhattan. Made partner in record time. Disappeared twelve years ago on the same day your mother died a most gruesome death. It seems her car was flattened by a large transport. Such a tragedy. His ten-year-old son disappeared with him. They traveled the world, went off-grid.” He looks deep into Matt’s face. “Sound familiar?”

Matt’s eyes drop to the floor, exhausted by his attempts to talk and unable to speak anymore.

Reaching into his tweed jacket, Ryzaard comes out with a pair of thin white surgeon’s gloves. With a snap, he pulls them on. “It doesn’t really matter. I just thought you’d like to know who I’ll be looking for next.” He fishes around in his pocket and draws out an old leather sheath and dagger, holding it up to show Matt. “I always carry it with me, for good luck.”

The smell of oil and wood floats faintly into Matt’s nostrils. He sees the weapon and tries to move his arms, but it’s no use. They feel like wooden bats hanging from his shoulders.

Ryzaard grasps the handle of the knife and slides it away from the leather, admiring the blade as it catches the sunlight from the window. Like a mirror, it reflects the glare into Matt’s eyes and sets off new cloudbursts of pain in his head. “I got it as a young man on the day my luck changed permanently for the better.” He walks toward Matt. “I’ve carried it with me ever since.”

Trying to shut out all that is external so he can focus on the storm of pain in his spine and skull, Matt thinks only about breathing. A desperate need to use the Stone consumes his thoughts. It’s his only chance.

Ryzaard seems to understand what Matt is thinking. “Too late for that, Matt. The drugs I injected into your body a few minutes ago will make it impossible to use the Stone. You need a clear head for that. It’s an old trick I learned many years ago. Anyway, it shouldn’t matter. You decided you don’t want the power I offered you. Remember?” He stands over Matt with his hands on his hips. “Now you’ll have to live, and die, with your decision.” Ryzaard shakes his head from side to side and stares out the window at the nearby tree.

He has the look of a man working hard to suppress a rising urge to kill.

It doesn’t work.

Ryzaard’s hand jumps forward and grasps Matt’s hair, pulling it back viciously and exposing his neck. The other hand raises the dagger to his skin and presses the tip of the naked blade into the soft tissue.

Matt feels the crimson line trickle down from the wound.

Ryzaard speaks through clenched teeth. “It really is a mystery. How could you turn down everything I offered you?”

Throwing the question out seems to calm him, and he waits patiently for Matt to find words.

As his head shakes uncontrollably, Matt feels the biting pain of his teeth cutting into his tongue. He fights to speak and finally manages to whisper. “Changed my mind. Join you.”

Ryzaard grins. “Too late for that.” He presses the blade a millimeter deeper into Matt’s neck. “I made the offer, promised you everything. You rejected it, rejected me. Even if you accept the offer now, how could I ever trust you?” He pulls the dagger back from Matt’s neck and raises the blade up, rubbing his thumb back and forth on the handle.

Matt inhales and holds his breath. He thinks of the Woman he saw up on the mountain.

Please… help.

Ryzaard exhales slowly, lets go of Matt and turns to walk back in the direction of Professor Yamamoto. “He was a good man, the professor. But you see, that’s just the problem. The world is full of good men who make no difference. It’s something I had hoped to teach you. It’s not enough to be good. Goodness alone is mediocre and weak. It produces nothing. To really make a difference in the world, you need power and the will to use it, no matter the cost.”

Ryzaard bends down to the floor and picks up the shattered bits of the memory crystal. “I’m sure you know what this is. Our good professor destroyed it before I could review the full contents of his work, the research I paid for.” With both hands, he grabs the lapels of Yamamoto’s suit coat and with ease lifts his body like a ragdoll up from the chair and drops him back down. Professor Yamamoto’s head and arms hang back, utterly devoid of movement.

With his dagger poised just a couple of feet from the professor’s chest, Ryzaard looks down and nods. “He showed me where his loyalties lie when he destroyed the memory cube. Just as you did when you refused to join me.” Ryzaard leans down and puts his mouth to the professor’s ear. “Sorry old friend, but you deserve this.” His words are loud enough for Matt to hear.

Matt senses what Ryzaard is about to do. “Don’t…” He fights to throw out the word, helplessness overwhelming him.

Taking one look at Matt, Ryzaard raises an eyebrow and thrusts the blade deep into the left side of Yamamoto’s chest. There’s a sound like a ripping watermelon. He pulls it out slowly and plunges the blade into the professor’s chest three more times.

Through the pain, Matt raises his head and turns to look squarely at Ryzaard. The professor has four gaping slits in his white shirt. Inside each one, there are glimpses of bright red flesh, but not a drop of blood.

“He won’t feel much pain. When we return to real-time, the heart muscle will be too damaged to move. Death will follow quickly. Quite merciful, don’t you think?”

Jessica’s body is draped over a chair next to the professor. The tip of Ryzaard’s dagger is poised a couple of feet away.

With every ounce of remaining energy, Matt’s thoughts cry out to the Woman he saw on the hilltop.

Please, don’t let him kill her.

Ryzaard turns away from Jessica. He picks Matt’s jax off the table and walks to the office door, stopping in front of the two Yakuza men guarding the entrance. “They’ve seen too much.” Without another word, he stabs them both in the chest as they stand like oil paintings in a museum. Without cleaning the blade of its bright stain, he carefully puts the dagger back in its sheath and slips it into his pocket. As he opens the door, he turns to Matt. “Feel free to keep them all in
null-time
as long as you want. Technically, they’re still alive and well. I guess that makes you at least partly responsible for their deaths.” He walks out the open door, and then turns back. “Sorry. I almost forgot the best part.”