by Jacob Whaler
Matt looks down at Ryzaard’s hands. “You’re wrong. These people aren’t free. Their happiness is an illusion. They fear you.” His eyes move to the woman at his side. “They fear me. I could never live like this.”
The throng of people gathers closer as the two men talk.
“I see peace and contentment.” Ryzaard sweeps his arm over the multitude of purple robes. “Safety. Love. The hopes and dreams burning in the hearts of men and women for thousands of years, fulfilled.” Ryzaard’s voice rises at the end. “Join me for their sake.” He points a finger at the woman at Matt’s side. “For her sake.”
A thought crosses Matt’s mind. He lifts his hand up to the skin behind his ear. His fingers brush the smooth surface of an embedded jewel, cold to the touch. “Am I to be one of your slaves, too?”
“Like everything else you see here, it’s an experiment, a product of this world I’ve built to test my plans for the future of the human race. The implant simply links us together so we can use the power of the Stones as one.”
Matt turns away from Ryzaard and looks out over the multitude, all of them still kneeling. Over the sea of heads, at the far end of the hall, he can see a door open to the darkness outside. “Rise to your feet,” he says, and tens of thousands stand up. He starts walking away from Ryzaard, through the crowd of people, to the open door. “Let me pass,” he whispers. The crowd parts to the right and left as he walks through it.
“Do not try to leave, Matt.” The voice behind him is firm and commanding. “This is my world. I created it and everything in it. You need me to get back home.”
Matt keeps walking, and then starts to jog. In a few seconds, he breaks into a full sprint, heading for the open door on the other side of the room, hundreds of meters away.
“Stop him!” The voice of Ryzaard booms behind Matt. The path that had opened up before him begins to close. Hands reach out and touch him as he rushes by. It isn’t long before they are trying to grab him.
“Stand back. Let me pass,” Matt says. He raises the Stone clenched tightly in his hand. There seems to be confusion among the crowd. Most of them pull back and watch him run by.
As he runs, pain stabs from behind his ear where the jewel is embedded, and an audible voice plays inside his head.
“The choice is yours. But choose wisely. You and everything you love will be destroyed if you refuse my offer. And when you are dead, your Stone will be mine.”
Matt keeps running and is halfway to the door when he looks down at his Stone and sees that its color is growing lighter.
So that’s your theory of freedom and choice, he thinks. Follow me or die. So cliché. That’s not a world I choose to live in.
“Matt, we would have made a good team, you and I. I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
The pain around Matt’s ear shoots down his neck into his spine and radiates out in every direction. His legs go limp and he falls to the ground. A burning fire starts to consume his bones. There’s a jagged edge to his breathing. Needles pierce through his eyes from the inside. The taste of metal permeates his tongue. He forces an eye open and can see that the crowd is pulling back from him, watching him in hushed silence from the distance of several meters.
Far off through the opening in the crowd, he can hear the crisp tap-tap of shoes on the marble floor. Ryzaard is walking closer.
CHAPTER 65
Help me.
A chandelier hangs directly above Matt. He stares at it, a golden glow radiating out from its branches. Some force closes his eyes against his will. In the darkness of his mind, he sees the Woman who showed him the creation of a world, the Woman who saved his life.
Like you did when I was a kid at the bottom of Skull Pass.
The pain grows more intense. Panic seeps into his breath. Muscles refuse to move. His whole body is shutting down against his will.
Let the mind control the flesh.
As the words of his dad flow through his brain, he begins to slow the exhales and inhales.
Little by little, his breathing settles down, and the Stone grows less heavy in his hand. Willing his eyes to open, he looks again at the chandelier, using it as a point of focus to concentrate and release the pain. His muscles relax with each rise and fall of his chest.
As he grips the Stone, the pain in his body passes out through his fingertips and toes to where it’s no longer connected to him. Matt rises to his feet, opens his hand and stares into the Stone’s brilliant white interior.
Still fifty feet away, Ryzaard moves closer, but seems to be in no hurry.
Free of pain, Matt runs his fingers back through his black hair, and casts a quick glance at Ryzaard. He turns and runs to the opening to the outside.
“Where are you going?” The voice sounds again inside his mind.
Matt doesn’t answer. He keeps running. People try to approach him on his way to the opening, but he waves his arms and they move back.
“Stop and make it easy on yourself.” Ryzaard’s voice booms inside Matt’s mind, much louder now. “Reconsider what you’re doing. You cannot make it back on your own.”
Matt sprints through the open door to the outside into the darkness and finds himself on a balcony, hundreds of meters above the black plain. There’s a mass of large trees below him, the edge of a forest. But how to get down? There aren’t any magic columns for the descent.
The crisp footsteps of Ryzaard echo behind him.
His eyes fall on the white Stone in his hand. He remembers a scene from a dream. Lifting the Stone high in the air, he brings it down hard, point first, into a marble pillar that stands beside him.
The Stone sticks fast in the marble like soft clay. A beam shoots out from its brilliant white surface on a downward diagonal that ends in the trunk of a massive tree on the edge of the forest below.
It worked in the dream. Maybe it will work in this world created by Ryzaard.
There’s the sound of running footsteps behind him. He turns back to see a herd of dark shapes. Thousands of them. Somehow, the people have morphed into anthropoid apes. They rush toward him, a black flood, rage burning in their eyes.
Matt jumps onto the railing of the balcony and looks out at the vast darkness below him. A wave of beasts launch themselves in the air, lunging for his body, claws and fangs focused on his neck.
He leaps out into the night sky with outstretched hands, fingers wide apart.
Time slows down.
The white beam rises up to meet him as he falls into the darkness. His hands find it, solid, warm and smooth, like a steel rod. Cool winds brush his face and lift his dark hair as he slides to the ground.
Just like the zip-line from the top of Jasper Peak.
Twisting bodies rain down around him.
He seems to recognize one as it moves past, turning its face up to stare at him. The fangs and claws pull back. The black hair fades. The arms and legs straighten. The body becomes small, petite, human again. For an instant he sees the face of his mother, falling into the darkness below, reaching out for him.
And then she is gone.
Reigning in his emotions, he starts counting and reaches thirty as his feet touch down. The white beam buries itself into the tree trunk in front of him and resolves into the Stone. Matt pulls it out of the wood with little effort and looks back up behind him in the direction of the balcony. High above, the dark shape of Ryzaard’s silhouette stands out against the open door, hands forward on the balcony rail.
The ground is littered with broken bodies.
“Matt, don’t force me to kill you. It’s not too late to stop.” The voice grates inside his head like a bad song.
He reaches his hand up and feels the jewel imbedded in the skin behind his right ear. His fingernails dig and claw at it. Beads of blood roll down his neck. It seems to repel all attempts to tear it out. Then he raises the tip of the Stone and puts it in position just behind his ear. A sharp pain shoots down his neck as he digs it in and pushes it against the edge of the jewel.
There is a pop and hiss, and then the pain instantly vanishes. Bringing the Stone down and staring at its tip, the jewel is smashed against it like a purple beetle covered in blood. A long filament of red and black fibers trails from it like a tail. Matt casts it to the ground and touches behind his ear.
Strangely, there’s no blood or trace of where the jewel has been. The skin is smooth, painless, completely healed.
Are you there? Can you hear me, old man?
No response.
At least Ryzaard is no longer inside his mind. Matt looks up once again at the building he just jumped from, towering over his head, balanced on a thin column of glass. The balcony is crowded with people, hundreds of them, standing close to the railing, looking down at him, as if they are spectators gathered at a public execution.
The sound of rushing feet draws Matt’s eyes back to ground level, and he sees shapes darting here and there under the building. He stares for a moment, until the realization that the shadows are coming closer brings him out of his reverie.
Turning his gaze to the darkness in the trees, he remembers the dreams, the black forms chasing him, hungry for the kill. It’s not just a dream anymore. Nausea touches his stomach. More footsteps sound behind him under the building. After a moment’s hesitation, he plunges past the first trees deeper into the depths of the forest.
CHAPTER 66
Kent inserts his finger into the bio-lock and feels a tingling sensation as it scans his skin and blood. It glows a pleasant shade of green, and the latch on the door opens. He enters the room, walks past boxes of electronics and climbing equipment and goes straight to his desk to open the package of Spysyn. Pulling a length of it from the spool, he stretches it between his hands and holds it up to the light. Stronger than steel and almost invisible. Great for fishing. Even better for snooping.
The whole idea came from that drug smuggler-turned-vigilante in Mexico who had befriended them so many years ago when they were on the run. With enough money to set up his own research lab, the drug lord invested in finding low-tech solutions to hi-tech problems. One of his greatest successes was devising a way to eavesdrop on police and rivals without electronics or data sniffers. The solution still brings a tingle to Kent’s spine when he thinks of it. And now he is actually going to use it for the first time.
He finds the red plastic crate and rummages through it for the miniature compressed air tank. Then he needs to figure out the right amount of zirconium oxide resin for the tip of the line that the carrying device will ferry across the open space and stick to the outside glass of the MX Global building. Too much resin and the subtle vibrations in the line will be too dampened to get a good reading. Too little and the tip will not stick. Wind and humidity also play into it. Taking a deep breath, he lets all the variables and potential problems float away and simply focuses on the task at hand. It may take a few tries to get it right, but it will work out. He’s already practiced on the neighbors at home. This will be the same, just on a bigger scale. The thermal imaging will tell him exactly where to target the carrying device, but it won’t be done for several hours.
He has all the time in the world to do it right.
First, Kent has to make a hole in the window. Using a carbon-tipped cutter, he works for more than an hour. At last, he eases the round plug of glass out and holds his breath, half expecting an alarm to ring and police to burst through the door behind him. But nothing happens. He turns the extracted piece over in his hands and marvels at its structural strength, much thinner than he expected.
“DSM ceramics,” he mutters to himself. “Harder than tungsten.”
With his face close to the hole, the damp outside air rushes in, bringing the smells and sounds of the city. He jumps to his feet and walks around the office to dip into multiple boxes for the hardened plastic parts he scattered and hid before leaving Colorado. He lays them out on a small open space on the floor. Within a few minutes the assembled crossbow is on the table by the window. Only twenty-seven inches long, he decides it will do just fine.
Now for the payload. He reaches for the Spysyn fish line and unwinds a small length. The acrylic sensor, barely the size of a snowflake, is easy to attach to the end of the line with a jeweler’s loop and some liquid silk. He applies a tiny drop of zirconium oxide resin to the sensor’s surface. The target is exactly fifty-one meters away, so he calibrates the carrying device on the crossbow to fifty meters and puts the sensor in a tiny cup on the end. He unwinds fifty-three meters of fish line, barely feeling it in his fingers and feeds it through the hole in the window, allowing the invisible line to hang loosely down the side of the building. Then he carefully positions the crossbow on its tripod and engages the launch mechanism. In less than five minutes he is ready to slide the nose of the crossbow through the hole in the window.
Time for a test firing.
The results of the thermal imaging will tell him exactly where the areas of greatest activity are inside the 175th floor of the MX Global building. Then he can target those areas with the listening device. But the results are still hours away, so he picks a random spot near the middle of the floor for a test run.
After peering through the scope and tweaking the angle slightly, he releases the electronic safety, sights down the crossbow again, inhales a breath and holds it.
His index finger taps the trigger.
The sound of compressed air explodes out of the back of the crossbow. The carrying device disappears and shoots across the chasm between the two buildings with the sensor balanced on its tip. One meter from the outer skin of the MX Global building, the carrying device reaches the end and snaps back, releasing the sensor on the end of the fishing line to travel the final meter through the air. It attaches itself to the glass-like surface. Or so Kent hopes.
With the weightless fishing line in his hands, he pulls gently on it, confirming that the sensor is in place. It will stay attached for several days or until he triggers the sonic wave that will cause it to disintegrate, whichever comes first.
Now for the fun part.
He runs the line into the Turing Box and turns on the voice recognition algorithm. It takes a minute to self-calibrate and filter out all mechanical vibrations and distortion coming from the ventilation system and elevators, the music playing from jaxes throughout the building, the beeps and rings of slates on every desk, the breeze blowing across the line. From the readings on the box, it’s clear this level of the building, the 175th floor, holds an unusually high density of mechanical and digital equipment. It takes several minutes, but the box is able to find the human voices, and then clarify and amplify them.
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.
CHAPTER 67
After 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.
