Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (69 page)

M
att comes down softly onto rocky ground as Yarah rolls away from his body.

A breeze blows the smell of quaking aspen and pine past his face, jarring memories of a far past. He opens his eyes and stares up at the white clouds floating in an ocean of blue. Feeling the Stone in his hands, he tries to get to his feet, but falls back with stabs of pain in his chest. Bringing his hands up, he brushes against the handle of a dagger and pulls it out. An instant later he heals the wound and gets to his feet to look down into Skull Pass, its steep slope covered with a fine carpet of late autumn Indian paintbrushes.

It was here that he almost died in an avalanche at the age of sixteen. It was past this spot that he used to ski with Jessica.

He whips around at the sound of labored breathing.

Jessica’s ashen figure lies on the ground two meters away.

Jumping to her side, he drops to his knees, brushes the hair from her eyes and wipes the blood from her lips. “Hold still while I heal you.” He cradles her head in his hands and kisses her forehead.

Her body shudders and twitches. “No . . . time.” With difficulty, her eyes open and stare up. “Kill Ryzaard.” Then they stare straight ahead and grow wide.

Matt senses a presence behind him and snatches a glimpse of Yarah as a jagged beam of light jumps from the tip of her Stone and catches him in the chest. A thin film of light still clings to his skin as the force of the impact slams him against a boulder three meters away.

Yarah stands over Jessica and looks down. “It’s over,” she says in a voice that is three octaves too low. As she raises her Stone, Matt crouches and shoots sparks of white energy from his Stone. They lift the little girl off the ground and knock her down the slope behind her.

Rushing to Jessica, he cradles her head once again. But the eyes stare forward and the body is limp. Closing his eyes and gripping the Stone, he drops into the dark space behind his eyes to find her. To heal her.

But all he finds is an empty vacuum.

Panic explodes inside him. Searching for her presence, he can’t find any trace of it.

He screams out to the Allehonen in desperation.

Help me find her! Don’t let her die!

His thoughts radiate out and return with
nothing
.

A flash of brilliant fire and pain ripples across his skin and thrusts him back into the real world. Yarah is pumping orange balls of energy out of her Stone against his back from just a few feet away with a maniacal grin on her face that he’s never seen before. The thin blue aura of energy still envelopes him, but is growing weak.

Jessica, come back to me.

He stares down at her lifeless body and up at Yarah as her face contorts and convulses.

His body goes numb with bottomless grief.

Yarah stops firing. “Jessica is gone forever.” Ryzaard speaks through her voice. “How will you go on without her?” A smile stretches across her lips. Her eyes are lifeless pools of black.

Jessica’s last words come back to Matt’s mind.

Kill Ryzaard.

Teeth coming together in rage, adrenaline surges through Matt’s legs. He lunges for Yarah against a torrent of orange lightning. A familiar sound bounces off the protective membrane, bringing terror in its wake.

Thump, thump, thump.

A swarm of black attack ships rises over the horizon.

Matt tackles Yarah to the ground. She grins up at him with raised eyebrows.

“Get out of her!” He slams his fist down onto her forehead.

Her body goes limp, her hand falls down and the Stone rolls out of her open palm.

Matt’s eyes shift between Jessica and Yarah on the ground. The
thump, thump, thump
of attack ships gets louder with every second.

Taking in a deep breath, his hands go down onto Jessica’s head. The power of his Stone surges through his mind bringing instant clarity. Two words become a mantra in his mind.

Find her.

Relaxing once again into the alternate reality of the Stones, he is floating in empty space, all senses heightened to the breaking point. He opens his eyes, hoping to see Jessica floating in a horizontal position, waiting to be healed.

But all he can see in the darkness is Yarah, still unconscious and unresponsive.

Panic turns to desperation. Perhaps he can join Yarah’s Stone to his, like before, and use the extra power to find Jessica and bring her back.

Reaching out to the little girl, he searches for her Stone and finds it floating near her side. He takes it into his hand and pulls it into his mind.

But it feels dead and lifeless. Unconnected to Yarah. Useless.

The realization dawns on him with sickening force.

In order to save Jessica, he’ll have to save Yarah first. The only way is to sever the connection between Yarah’s implant and Ryzaard.

Turning Yarah over on her stomach, Matt presses his fingers against the implant behind her ear and drops down into her body. But it’s too late. The black tendrils are already deep in her skull and spine, impossible to extract. Just like Miyazawa.

Maybe there’s another way.

He pulls out of her and goes back to the real world at the top of Skull Pass, kneeling over Yarah. The attack fighters are closing in, their insect bodies hanging just over the ridge of mountains to the east. Flashes of light from their wings means they’ve already started to fire.

With an instant of concentration, Matt thinks of a shallow cave nearby he used to explore during long, hot summers. Placing hands on Yarah and Jessica, he jumps all three of them to the cave.

If Ryzaard is tracking the Stones, it won’t take long for the attack ships to find them, but it may give Matt the time he needs to help Yarah and figure out the next step. Somewhere, beyond the darkness around his mind, a nagging voice screams for attention.

What if I can’t bring Jessica back?

He pushes the thought into the darkness as grief presses down from all sides.

If Jessica really is gone, it will crush him later, like a tidal wave, and wash all joy out of his life with no hope of ever being whole again. But not now. Digging deep, he puts up a wall of stone and mortar in his mind to cut off any feelings of impending grief.

Later. He will deal with it later.

He forces himself to focus on Yarah. She’s trapped inside, waiting for him to find her and free her from the implant. Putting his hands on her shirt, he rips it in two, exposing the bony little spine that pushes up the skin on her back like a sub-dermal centipede. With trembling hands, he runs his fingers halfway down the vertebrae and stops, marking the point. Then he jumps in below the skin as an orange fireball explodes just outside the protective bubble around them.

Finding an opening, he slides between a vertebra and disk into the tight web of nerve tissue making up the spinal cord. Dropping down lower, it opens up like an ocean of massive branches breaking into forks, weaving together and tapering down to delicate fingers. He moves through the spine toward her brain, scanning for the black shadow of the encroaching implant.

But he finds nothing.

Fighting back the panic, he rises out of Yarah’s body, touches the implant with a fingertip and drops into the flesh just to the side of it. He finds one of the tendrils that branches out to her spine and hovers above it, following its length like a transport gliding up a river to its source. It twists into the spinal column, merging with nerve tissue and then breaking free to branch into smaller and smaller filaments.

Matt stops where one of the filaments comes to a point and studies its movement as it lengthens and grows like a bolt of lightning in slow motion. He drops down in scale and tries to penetrate it where it looks the thinnest, but it’s composed of the same material as the implant itself and impossible to breach.

The tiny tip of the tendril comes into view.

It’s hollow and open.

He drops down even more in scale and hangs suspended like a dot in the spinal fluid as the open tip of the tendril engulfs and shoots past him. Inside its darkness, he moves in the opposite direction back up to the implant. As he draws closer to the source, it’s harder and harder to move against a force that repels him like a powerful magnet in reverse.

He concentrates on his Stone and draws enough power to move against the tide.

Up ahead, a massive blue sphere rises over the horizon, boiling and exploding like the surface of the sun. Only two words come to mind as he gazes at it.

Beauty itself.

Fighting to hold his position, a current of energy pushes him back, like an unrelenting solar wind.

He circles around it, a dark speck orbiting a massive blue orb. To make further progress, he’ll have to find a way to penetrate the surface. He makes a push toward it, but the sphere thrusts him back as the deafening roar of a wind tunnel blasts in his ears. With his Stone close to his chest, he lays down a thin green layer of plasma around his body, points his Stone at the roiling surface of the sphere and shoots out a burst of energy. It makes contact with the sphere and opens a small hole.

Closing his eyes, he jumps through the hole to the interior. The opening slams shut behind him. He is left in a silent void.

And then he hears the distant sound of Yarah screaming.

He rushes to the sound, but it’s coming from every direction.

“Yarah!” he yells. “Where are you?”

The screaming doesn’t stop or diminish. It’s a constant and steady chord, like high pressure air leaking from a punctured tire.

He scans the darkness in every direction. A pinprick of light floats directly above him. He shoots toward it. As it grows from a dot to a circle, it pulls on him at ever accelerating speed. Reaching it, it engulfs and blows past him in a long white blur before disappearing into black space.

All motion stops.

He stands on the surface of a glass planet looking down into its core. A long tube three inches in diameter, reminding him of a rat’s tail, attaches to its surface between his feet. Looking around, a forest of similar tails extends up and out of sight. Still gripping the Stone in his right hand, he grabs the tail with the other hand, looks up and pushes off the planet.

After long minutes of travel, the tails begin to thin out. He slows his ascent. Shadows float above him. Emerging above them, he stops and stares.

The shadows he had seen from below come into focus. They are like the heads of great white sharks with jaws clamping down on the backs and chests of billions of people. Legs protrude up and out from the mouths as far as Matt can see.

He remembers the dream shared by all recipients of the implant. Large jaws chasing them, closing down.

It’s starting to make sense.

An alternate reality where Ryzaard holds the minds of humankind in bondage.

He looks down at the small legs protruding from the shark mouth in front of his eyes.

Yarah.

Reaching inside, he touches her lower back. “Yarah, can you hear me?”

No response.

He tries to pry the jaws open, but they don’t budge. Beating on the head, even with the Stone, doesn’t help. Somehow, he has to break the connection. Dropping just below the head, he holds the tail in one hand. With the Stone in his other hand, he shoots a blade of light out of its tip and slices cleanly through.

Like a machine, the huge mouth opens and releases the girl. It floats away into space.

Yarah’s eyes flip open.

Matt hugs her to his chest. “Are you all right?”

“I killed Jessica.” Yarah looks up with pleading in her eyes. “You tried to save her and I stopped you. It’s my fault.”

Matt shakes his head. “Not you, Yarah. It was Ryzaard.”

“Miyazawa called out to me, asked me to undo the chains.” She buries her eyes in Matt’s chest. “He said it was what you wanted, that he was fully healed. He grabbed me and put something behind my ear. It bit me, and I couldn’t get it off.”

Squeezing his eyes, Matt tries to cry, but there are no tears in the alternate reality they float in. “It’s not your fault. I should have known Ryzaard could work through Miyazawa. I should have protected Jessica and you.”

“Is she dead?” Yarah’s eyes are wide. “Is she really dead?”

“I don’t know. I tried to bring her back, but she was gone.” A wall of grief rises up to engulf him.

Not now.

He pushes it back.

Yarah stares up at Matt in silence, her eyes searching his face. “There has to be a way to save her. We can bring her back. The Allehonen can help.”

“I tried, Yarah.” Matt shakes his head. “But maybe there’s a chance if we work together.”

“She can’t die. We can save her. We
have to
save her.”

Jessica’s last words come back into Matt’s mind.

Kill Ryzaard.

“I hope so. Right now, we have to jump back and go after Ryzaard. It may be our last chance.”

“But Jessica . . .”

“Jessica understands that’s what we have to do. Hold on.”

“Wait!” Yarah looks out on the vast sea of bodies floating above the planet. “When I got pulled here, I saw something.”

“What was it?”

Yarah stares down, as though trying to remember. “I was moving through a maze with the Stone in my hand. Going so fast that it was all a blur. I saw a point of light above me. His mind was there, inside the light.”

“Ryzaard?”

“Yes.” Her gaze slowly returns to Matt. “He was controlling the maze and all the other minds in it. From above. I tried to reach for the light. But then the big mouth came. Everything went black.” Her gaze goes down to the planet. “That’s how we can find him. Through the maze. It’s down there.”

“Can you remember where?”

“Maybe,” she says. “If I get back inside the maze. Inside the planet.”

“Let’s go.” Matt starts to drop down through the forest of tails with Yarah holding onto him.