Stones (Data) (65 page)

“A diversion?” Little John cocks his head to one side.

“That’s my guess.”

“How do you know he’s penetrated into the building?”

The tall man shifts his weight back and forth on his large feet. “There was an explosion.” He lets the words come out slowly and carefully.

“An explosion? Where?”

“The onsite power generators. They’re all on level 5. Looks like he got them with the shaped charges.”

Little John sits down in the camp chair next to the small fridge. He opens it and takes out a cold beer, pops off the top and takes a long drink before looking up.

“So there’s no power in the building.”

“That’s right. It’s dead in the water right now, top to bottom.”

Little John shakes his head back and forth, laughing to himself. “He’s good. You have to give him that. He’s good.” He takes another drink from the can, and then puts it down. “How do you know he’s in the building?”

“The Children are tracking him.”

Little John spews out a mouthful of golden liquid and covers the open floor of the tent.

“Tracking him?” he says. “The Children are inside the building tracking him?” He shakes his head back and forth. “This is bad.”

“They’re following him up an abandoned elevator shaft right now. It looks like he’s heading straight for the top. Right for Ryzaard.”

Little John holds the beer can to his lips for a moment, and then places it on his knee, cocking his head to the side and squinting his eyes, as if he’s trying to see across the thousands of miles that separate him from the crazy man trying to find Ryzaard in the MX Global building.

“The time for decision has arrived.” Little John’s gaze is unfocused, drifting around the tent. “What do we do?”

“Operation Corporate Takeover.” The tall man shifts his weight on his legs. “It’s our only choice.”

Little John looks up. “I know we’ve been thinking about it for years. Are we ready for something that big?”

“Hard to say.” The tall man strokes his chin with long fingers. “We’ve got good climbers, all with the latest scaling equipment. They’ve been itching to do something like this ever since we formed the group. If we got them started now, they’d be up the sides of the building and reach the 175th floor in a few minutes. Then they’d break through the windows at the top. With all the chaos in the building, it might work, at least as a diversion to get him out.”

“What about the visibility?” Little John’s fingers drum the side of the beer can. “It’s still daylight. They’d be seen from the ground. People will get curious. Investigate. It might lead them back to the freedom camps.”

“That’s a chance we have to take, if you want to get him out of there alive.”

“Agreed.” Little John stands up and walks to a pile of pallets at the back of the tent. He picks up a wooden box on top and opens it with a key. The lid pops up, exposing a blue jax. “Get Jones on the line and tell him to get it started. You can give him the details. Let’s hope this doesn’t backfire.”

T
he last thing Matt remembers is a blast and a blinding flash of light. Then darkness. When he wakes up, he is laying in the mud with Jessica leaning over him, looking down into his face. She helps him get up into a sitting position. Still gripping the Stone in his right hand, Matt has an aching feeling in his wrist just above the Stone.

A dark form lays crumpled on the ground a few meters away.

Matt glances over at it. “Is that Ryzaard?”

“Yes,” Jessica says. Her hands and arms are trembling, her whole body shaking. The same as Matt.

“How did you do it?” she says.

The muscles in Matt’s back ache and spasm. “Do what?”

“Don’t you remember?” Jessica looks incredulous.

“Not really. There was a blinding flash, a big noise.”

“The light exploded out of your Stone and slammed into Ryzaard. Just before it hit, a thin film of blue formed around him like a shield. But your light still blasted him over there. I think you might have killed him.”

The rain is pouring down as Matt stands up on shaky legs and pulls up Jessica. They lean on each other, breathing hard.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” Matt turns to glance at the body of Ryzaard again, lying still in the mud.

Jessica shakes her head. “I don’t know, but he hasn’t moved.”

“Either way, let’s get out of here.” Matt’s fingers go around Jessica’s arm while he holds the Stone firmly in his other hand. “Just relax. I’ll try to move us somewhere else.” With eyes closed, he thinks again of the hilltop in Japan and imagines that he and Jessica are standing there, at the base of the boulder. Any minute, he expects the darkness to vanish and the sun to burst down upon them.

After a long silence, they don’t go anywhere. Matt opens his eyes.

“Not working?” Jessica says.

“No. I don’t know why. I’m doing the same thing I did before.”

His eyelids drop down again, and his grip on Jessica’s arm tightens. This time he thinks of home in Colorado. With a deep focus on his breath, he can feel the air going in and out, belly rising and falling. An image of him and Jessica standing in his kitchen plays through his mind. He opens himself to it, reaches for it.

Nothing.

He has a sense that something is holding him back. His gaze is pulled over to Ryzaard, still lying on the ground. “I’m going to have a look at him. Stay here.”

“Are you crazy? What if he wakes up and—” Jessica stops and becomes a statue.

Before she can finish her sentence, Matt quickly finds the familiar place inside his mind where he goes to stop time.

Great drops of rain hang in the air like dirty diamonds in the darkness.

He walks a few paces through the mud until he’s standing over Ryzaard. Pointing his Stone to the black underbelly of the clouds above, he wills a beam of energy to rise up. A thin white line with crisp edges slowly stretches skyward for two meters until he wills it to stop. Suspended drops of water sizzle and pop against it as he waves it silently in the air. Without warning, he brings it down and slices into the mud inches from Ryzaard’s head. A cloud of steam and dirt explodes at his feet.

In his mind’s eye, he sees the destruction he wreaked on an entire city that night Ryzaard first brought him to this world. He looks around at the shadows of buildings rising around the clearing.

With the Stone in both hands, he finds a connection with the energy beam and wills it to grow longer. Like an extension of his own body, it shoots out another ten meters. As he concentrates, he finds that he can make it bend, as if it were his own arm.

The beam coils up in an elegant spiral high into the sky.

He points it at one of the mammoth buildings two or three hundred meters away. Imagining a sphere of light bursting from Stone’s tip, his thoughts are instantly translated into reality. A ball of blue fire jumps across the distance in a blur where it pierces the structure and, in an explosion of sparks, opens a massive gash in its side.

His lips curl into a grin.

With the Stone in his right hand, he stares down at Ryzaard. He studies the man for any sign of movement.

There isn’t any. Ryzaard is as still as Jessica. Perhaps he is frozen in time, just like her.

Matt’s eyes scan the face. One cheek is half buried in mud. The mouth hangs open with eyes closed to narrow slits. Without taking his eyes off Ryzaard, Matt reaches down and gently tugs at the Stone in Ryzaard’s fingers. It slips out easily.

A feeling of invincibility flows over him as he holds a Stone in each hand.

Time to kill.

The words seem to come into his mind from an outside source. He takes a step back and wills a white blade to grow two meters out of his own Stone. Raising it in the rain, he studies the pulsing white energy and brings it down slowly until it floats above Ryzaard’s exposed neck.

With just a flick of his wrist, he can be rid of this nightmare.

A tremor moves through his hand. He looks back at Jessica, standing motionlessly in the darkness behind him, still in time freeze. Her eyes don’t move, but they seem to urge him on.

But I’ve never killed anyone
, he wants to tell her.

Before he can turn back to Ryzaard, a sharp pain shoots up his leg from the back of his knee. Both legs buckle, and he loses his balance. Twisting as he falls, he brings the blade down into the mud where the body of Ryzaard lay.

But Ryzaard is gone.

Ryzaard’s Stone is jerked out of Matt’s left hand. A thin white line flashes above him. His own blade instinctively rises up to meet it. As the two beams make contact, a bone-jarring vibration jolts up his arm, through his shoulder and into his chest. His back slams into the mud.

Ryzaard stands over him. “You are pathetic and despicable. A true weakling. Are you so opposed to using your power that you do not even
try
to kill me?” He waves his blade over Matt’s head, and the smell of burnt ozone pours off it. “Of course, no one can kill me in this world. I’m safe here. That is how I designed it. You and your friend do not have the same protection.” His jaw clenches shut as he brings the blade down with both hands.

Rolling to the side, a searing heat grazes the skin of Matt’s back.

Ryzaard’s eyes move beyond Matt to Jessica standing still as a rock in the distance. The blade of his Stone stretches out in length to reach beyond her. He grins and swings it savagely to cut her down.

Channeling all his effort, Matt raises his Stone straight up. As light concentrates in its tip, a flat disc of blue energy pops out and blocks the blow. The thought that Jessica is in danger causes a rush of adrenaline. His mind is instantly clear and connects to his body. With a quick arch of his spine, he jumps to his feet.

They stand glaring at each other, blades of pure plasma gleaming, moving in slow circles. Matt keeps the still form of Jessica to his back.

“You haven’t got a chance,” Ryzaard says. He thrusts his blade forward, and it slices the rain close to Matt’s ear before being deflected away.

Ryzaard stops and drops his hand to his side while the blade of his Stone fades away in the darkness.

Matt backs up in the direction of Jessica, keeping his blade bright and pointing at Ryzaard in a defensive posture. The flow of time pulls at him, like a swift river current, and he struggles to hold it back. Something is pushing against him, and it’s getting harder and harder to stay focused.

With his back in a rigid straight posture, Ryzaard holds his Stone at his side as the thin blade grows to a massive length. In a blur, he whips it up and over Matt, as if drawing an arch. Matt’s blade reaches up to meet it too late as it passes over his head. Ryzaard smiles in apparent satisfaction.

He turns and runs in the opposite direction, away from them.

Fighting back the instinct to chase Ryzaard, Matt turns to face Jessica. She is standing still, unharmed. He glances at Ryzaard, receding in the distance, and wonders what’s going on.

The pull of time is getting heavy, and he knows he can’t hold it back much longer. With Ryzaard gone, they seem to be out of danger, so he faces Jessica and allows himself to relax. Time flows again, and Jessica comes to life, a startled look on her face.

Suspended drops of rain pour down.

“You did it again,” she says.

“Did what?”

“Jumped. Moved. It scares me.”

“Sorry,” Matt says. “I stopped time to go have a look at him.” He points behind her. “He’s not dead.”

She turns and stares through the rain as a dark figure moves into the trees around the edge of the clearing. He looks like he’s seeking shelter under one of the mammoth structures just beyond the forest.

“Where’s he going?” Jessica says.

“I don’t know. We have to be careful. He may be playing some sort of trick. Maybe we beat him.”

Weary smiles form on their faces.

“Now that he’s gone, how do we get—” Jessica looks up and freezes, her smile fading, her mouth dropping open. She tries to speak, but the words seem to get stuck in her throat. Her eyes grow larger and larger.

Following her eyes, Matt whips around to see a line of massive skyscrapers falling down upon them, like a swath of trees in a forest cut cleanly through. With no place to run, they will be crushed in seconds.

Now Matt understands what Ryzaard was doing when he flashed his energy blade over Matt’s head and ran away.

He pulls Jessica close and relaxes into the familiar place where he goes to stop time, but something repels him and he can’t find it. Time is running out. Directly above, gravity is pulling the structures down on their heads. The lattice-work of windows comes into clear focus only a hundred meters above and closing fast.

Matt’s eyes meet Jessica’s, and they kneel together in the mud. Crouching over her, there’s popping in his ears from the rush of air. The sound of twisting steel and shattering glass is deafening. Bits and pieces of broken stone and metal splash into the mud around them.

In his mind, Matt sees the image of his father doing a yoga pose, kneeling on the ground, looking up to the ceiling with both hands above his head, elbows straight, palms together. With only a few seconds left before impact, a surge of love for him and Jessica moves through his body.