Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (70 page)

R
yzaard soars through the Mesh in his dragon avatar, dipping and climbing between Mesh-points floating like castles in the sky. With the death of the priest, Ryzaard is spending more real time at Miyazawa’s shrine preaching to the masses. He finds it to be a relaxing way to pass the time, and a good place to keep his finger on the pulse of the world.

He drops close to a Macau gambling establishment and enjoys the surprised look on the patrons as his claws rip off the roof and treat them to a hail of fire that leaves nothing but a cloud of dissipating ash in his wake. The Mesh-point is destroyed, along with billions of IMUs.

It’s exhilarating to cleanse the earth of such scum.

Organized crime is high on his list of targets. Most of the hardcore types have already been wiped out in the first wave of purges after the Nightmare, as it’s come to be called, their hearts simply refusing to beat in their chests. The mass cardiac arrests have been duly reported in the Mesh-news, followed by a show of joyous celebration by their repentant families, all of it engineered by Ryzaard’s prompting.

Hundreds of Children have already been found and forcibly given the blue jewel. It’s only a matter of time before there are no unmarked descendants of the freedom camps.

Matt is tied down on a Colorado mountaintop next to his dead girlfriend. Combat fighters are closing in and will be able to keep him busy until Ryzaard can devise a plan to deal with him. Matt’s grief at losing Jessica may be enough to give Ryzaard the edge he needs to finally kill the boy.

He will find out sooner or later that the implants cannot be extracted. It’s part of their design, and an integral part of the plan. The little girl and her enhanced abilities will prove useful in the future, if Ryzaard decides to keep her alive.

It’s all unfolding with effortless efficiency.

As he is soaring over the massive Mesh-point recently completed for MX Global, Ryzaard senses a sudden loss. A connection cut from the network, no longer there. As if, without warning, someone pulled a single live hair from his head. Jumping back to the network, he makes a quick inventory.

Yarah is gone.

M
att lands hard on the planet surface and rolls. Yarah hits a few feet away.

He can’t push a thought away as it cascades down on him.

Maybe there’s time to save Jessica. Maybe he can still find her. Maybe she isn’t really dead.

Dropping to his knees, Matt takes the Stone in both hands and brings the point down on the glass at his feet. Cracks radiate out like veins. He stomps on it and breaks through, staring into the interior of the planet.

Plumes of neon color rise from far below, mixing and twisting into double and triple helixes. Low frequency vibrations permeate the space inside the planet.

“Let’s go,” Matt says. “Stay close.”

Yarah drops her head. “Right behind you.”

He bends forward like a diver plunging into the ocean and lets himself fall through the hole into a sea of color. Massive bubbles rising from below shoot past him. Small fingers touch his back, and the thin arms wrap around his neck as Yarah holds on.

Spreading out his arms like an eagle, Matt surveys the area below. “What are we looking for?”

“The maze,” Yarah says. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”

Through the colored mists below they see faint outlines of organic shapes, branches and tendrils. Dropping closer, Matt slows their descent. Coming to a stop, they hover above a massive landscape of billions of intertwined tubes ranging in size from hair-like filaments to trunks the size of large trees. Matt guesses the entire structure is larger than the moon and forms the core of the planet. It reminds him of what brain tissue might look like on a microscopic level.

“This must be it.” Matt looks into the tightly woven architecture of multicolored tubes and pathways. “It certainly looks like a maze to me. How do we get in?”

“I don’t know.”

Matt floats close and stretches out his hand, placing it on the nearest pink structure that looks like a blood vessel. It’s warm to the touch, alive and inviting.

Thoughts of Jessica rise again. With effort, he pushes them back and clears his mind.

“I think I understand. Hold on.” Matt’s eyes close, and he imagines he and Yarah jumping through the membrane into the tubular structure. The space around them flashes white, like it would with a typical jump. Matt isn’t sure what to expect when they land inside.

He has a surge of panic. The world turns into a blur of color and movement. “Are you there, Yarah?”

“Here,” she says. “This is the maze I was talking about. It feels the same as before.”

Matt turns to look in the direction of her voice and sees nothing. “Where are you?” He looks for his own arms and legs and can’t find them.

“Right here.” A hint of fear shades Yarah’s voice. “What about you?”

“I guess we’re both here, just our minds.”

Matt focuses on the scene around them. “Feels like we’re moving incredibly fast.” As he concentrates on the movement, a map starts to form in his mind of a complex of passageways, forks, turns, intersections, loops. It takes on a more detailed shape, and he sees that he and Yarah are moving through it in a circuit. “It’s a network of some kind, and we’re shooting around it.”

“It must be connected to the implants,” Yarah says. “I got pulled here right after I got mine.”

A schematic of the network distills in his mind. Matt finds that he can control his movement and move instantly on the shortest path to any point.

“Are you still with me, Yarah?”

“Right here.”

And then he senses the network isn’t a closed system. Like magnetic poles, there are two points that pull his attention away from all the other pathways. One of them like an entrance, and the other an exit.

“Do you feel the two points pulling at opposite ends?” Matt says.

“Now I do,” Yarah says. “One leads in, and one leads out.”

“Which one will take us to Ryzaard?”

He’s aware of Yarah pausing, searching with her mind.

“He’s near the one leading out of the maze,” she says.

“That’s where we’re going, then. Stay with me.”

Matt bends his thoughts to the exit point and instantly flashes out into neon white space. Floating islands of pastel color hover above and below, in every direction. Yarah floats at his side, a stylized caricature of herself with big eyes and long hair, like a Japanese anime.

“The Mesh.” Matt and Yarah say it together.

Yarah gazes from side to side, up and down. “Billions and billions of people. But he’s here. I can feel it.” Her eyes go to her body. “This isn’t really me, is it?”

“No,” Matt says. “Our bodies are still in the cave on the mountain.” He reaches out with a strand of thought. “Don’t worry. The attack ships haven’t found us yet. But we have to hurry.”

“What about Jessica?”

Matt pushes back a wave of fear. “Her last words were
Kill Ryzaard
. That’s what we’re going to do. We’ll come back to her after we’re done.”

As Matt says the words, a sense of calm comes over him.

I will find her.

Gripping his Stone, Matt focuses on one of the floating islands. Colors blur past, and he is standing at the center of an enormous rotating ring with spokes radiating out to the rim. Through its transparent walls, he can see the movement of thousands of shapes, some humanoid, others closer to insects or reptiles, all of them standing in front of bluescreens with churning numbers.

“Must be a casino,” Matt says.

Yarah materializes a meter away. “He’s close.” She casts her eyes around wildly. “Coming closer.” Her thin arms suddenly shoot out and grab Matt’s wrist. “Jump!”

A dark shadow crashes down, and then they are floating a hundred meters away, watching the casino disintegrate into a cloud of gray ash. A massive black dragon blasts through it. The creature turns, hovers and stares at them with crimson eyes.

“Ryzaard?” Matt says.

“That’s him.” Yarah drifts backward. “He’s angry. Very angry.”

The dragon morphs into a blurred line, suddenly growing larger.

Gripping his Stone, Matt throws a thick wall of green energy around him and Yarah. As the creature slams into it, sparks and pain jolt through Matt’s bones. The energy shield disintegrates into tiny droplets. The dragon turns and whips its thorny tail, catching Matt in the ribs. A crush of bone and ripping flesh.

She’s dead. I killed her.

The voice of Ryzaard sears Matt’s mind like a hot wire in his brain.

He casts his gaze about for Yarah and sees her broken and distorted body floating five meters away. Looking at himself, he sees his own injuries in cartoonish detail, bones protruding through the skin, arms and legs bent at grotesque angles.

Yet he is still alive.

As he looks on, Yarah’s arms and legs turn into yellow rods and extend out twenty meters. Delicate veined webbing expands into the open spaces between them. Her body elongates into a huge segmented worm complete with compound eye and antennae.

She has become a massive butterfly and begins to scream in ecstasy.

“You can be anything you want. Anything you can imagine!” Whipping her wings, the air around Matt turns turbulent. “Hurry, before he comes back!”

The dragon appears in a power dive from straight above them. Yarah twists, jumps to the side and beats her huge wings. A strong draft whips the air and sends the dragon careening away into a tailspin.

“That was fun!” Yarah’s shouts of joy jolt Matt’s mind.

And then it clicks. In the Mesh, imagination
is
reality. A child’s paradise.

An awesome weapon.

Matt thinks of the birds of prey that soar above the Mosquito Range back home. His face and nose become the eyes and beak of a mighty eagle. Arms extend out into a wingspan eighty feet from tip to tip with titanium carbide feathers. His chest and trunk bulk up and grow carbon polymer plating. Talons as large as samurai swords and as sharp as scalpels hang below his body.

Beating his wings, he shoots up, becoming the hunter instead of the hunted, looking for the dragon.

“Watch out!” Yarah shrieks.

From directly below, a blur pounds into his chest. The sickening crunch of inner bone structure mixes with an explosion of metallic feathers as he careens into multiple back flips. Righting himself, he heals the damage on the inside and bulks up the bone scaffolding, changing it to a spiral structure that can bend and absorb impact without breaking.

All with simple thought.

Twisting, he follows the line of the dragon arcing away above him. “Let’s go,” he yells to Yarah. “After him. Stay close.”

They both shoot up as the dragon hovers and stares above them. Matt positions his talons in front of his chest for maximum effect. When the impact comes, he avoids a direct assault and, tilting to the side, digs all his claws into the creature’s exposed belly, opening parallel lines of ripped flesh. As Yarah passes, she beats her wings into the massive head and leaves the dragon tumbling through white space in her wake.

But Ryzaard soon heals, just like they did.

The dragon comes to a stop and grows lethal-looking metallic horns on its wings, thickened armor, and multiple sets of legs with meat hooks for claws.

The battle in the Mesh is going nowhere. Matt tries to think of a way to do some real damage to Ryzaard.

“How do you find a Mesh-point?” he says.

“Just think it in your mind, and you’ll jump there,” Yarah says. “That’s what Michiko did when she was in the Mesh.”

“OK, I’ll give it a shot. Follow me.” Matt thinks of a name. The words burn in his mind in bold block letters.

MX Global Incorporated.

It’s location in the three dimensional cube space of the Mesh jumps out at him. He reaches out to it and pulls Yarah with him. White space becomes a blur of color and sound, a psychedelic tunnel.

And then he is there, floating in front of a mini-planet resembling a gargantuan snow globe that is clearly designed by a kid with a love for the ocean.

The sphere is at least ten kilometers across. Towers made of rotating circular floors are stacked hundreds of stories high like pancakes in delicate spirals. Each tower stands on an island of golden sand surrounded by turquoise water.

People walk out on balconies and float down to ground level for a stroll on the beach. Gravity reverses in the top half of the sphere so that, instead of blue sky above the buildings, there’s an upside down ocean with row upon row of perfectly curling waves flowing across its surface, dotted with surfers whose heads point down. Lush jungle and palm trees fill in the open spaces. Air transports with flexible bird wings hang in the air and move between buildings like graceful seagulls.

It’s a picture perfect work of art.

Matt gazes at the Mesh-site, a floating jewel in white space. “Welcome to MX Global, the company Ryzaard is using to take over the world.”

“What are we going to do?” Yarah says.

“Destroy it.” As Matt moves closer, a thin haze of light blue mist coats the outer layer of the sphere. “That must be what’s protecting it. Be careful.”