by Jacob Whaler
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 fr
om 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.”
Matt struggles through jagged surges of pain to hear the sound of the surf. It’s farther away than before, but he still manages to hold on with a thin thread of consciousness. His drooping eyelids lift, and he looks at Ryzaard standing in the doorway, smiling. “Why?” says Matt.
Ryzaard puts both hands into his suit pockets and pulls them out. In his left hand he holds the pen-like device he pressed against Matt’s neck earlier. In his right hand he holds Matt’s Stone. “I’ll put it to good use.” He points the pen squarely at Matt and presses his thumb on a small raised stub, pushing it down with a satisfying click.
At the same instant, something moves inside Matt’s neck near a main artery.
“You have five minutes of life before that tiny capsule I implanted empties its contents into your bloodstream.” Ryzaard bends his lips into a half smile. “Try to enjoy it.” With that, Ryzaard turns and walks out the door.
A split second later, a new and distinct stab of pain shoots through a nerve along the length of his neck and through his spine. It feels like an electric shock is branching off into every corner and cell of his body.
The connection to the thin thread of sound made by the surf on a distant beach is severed, slipping from his mind like water through a sieve. A wave of cicada buzzing pierces through the window.
Matt is back in real time.
Through blurred vision, he sees the two Yakuza thugs clutch their chests and pull away with hands stained crimson. Seconds later, they collapse to the floor. Professor Yamamoto’s head drops down loosely and blood pours out a few inches below his chin, soaking the lower half of his white shirt on its way to a puddle on the floor.
Matt arches his back, raises his eyes to the ceiling and opens his mouth wide. His body strains against the tape holding his wrists until it cuts into his skin. As his thoughts turn to Jessica, air rushes out of his lungs with the sound of a thousand dying dreams.
CHAPTER 68
Ryzaard steps outside the professor’s office, shuts the door and walks down the hall to the restroom. He enters quickly and, finding it empty, locks the door behind him. After the flight over and the events of the afternoon, he has a sudden hunger for miso and garlic. There is a ramen restaurant just a block away from the university main gate with its promise of long noodles basking in salty broth, crispy fried garlic gyoza resting on the side. While Matt’s life drains out, Ryzaard can rest at the restaurant and then jump back to the airport for the flight home. His fingers swim into his pocket and caress the rough surface of Matt’s Stone.
Two Stones. Just the beginning.
With a smile, he closes his eyes so he can see the bookstore next door to the ramen shop. His mind moves through the floor plan, searching for a quiet, empty space. He wills himself there. For half a second, the world falls away and he feels the familiar sensation of motion.
As the motion stops, he opens his eyes and is standing in front of the mirror in the bookstore restroom. After relieving himself, he walks out into the store, through the aisles crowded with college age youth and out the front door. The aroma of garlic and ginger pull him ten meters down the sidewalk and through the red noren curtain that hangs across the entrance.
By the time he sits down at the counter and puts in his order, his appetite is raging to the point of frenzy. There is a long two-minute wait, and then steady hands place a steaming bowl under his nose. He hunkers down with chopsticks in hand to devour the contents. When the plate of gyoza arrives, he dumps them all into the bowl with a splash.
Judging from their stares, the university students in the ramen shop are marveling at the skill of the old gaijin in the art of slurp and burp.
He drains the last of the broth and puts the bowl down with the chopsticks lying across the top. With a full belly, an exhale of satisfaction flows out between his lips. A glance at the digital clock on the wall tells him that the capsule implanted in Matt’s neck has burrowed its way into his carotid artery and injected twenty cc’s of pure distilled water, killing him in seconds and leaving no trace in his bloodstream for the police lab technicians to find.
With the former holder of the Stone now dead, it’s time for him to bond with it and forge a link that will remain until Ryzaard’s mortality reaches its end. Luckily for him, the accumulation of Stones will make it possible to put that time off to the far future, perhaps indefinitely. With a half grin on his face, he decides it would be fitting to bond with the Stone in the ramen shop on a full stomach. But there is a sudden lightness in the pocket of his tweed jacket. He reaches into the familiar space.
The Stone is gone.
Abruptly standing up from the counter, Ryzaard scatters the chopsticks and knocks the empty ramen bowl onto the floor where it shatters and attracts the eyes of the other patrons. He rushes to the exit without stopping to pay.
Not dead. Not dead. Not dead.
Like a mantra, he repeats the words over and over, as if trying to drive away an evil spirit.
Once outside, he hurries to the crowded book store next door, elbows his way through a thick crowd of young people staring up at bluescreens on the ceiling. When he is in the restroom in the back, he chooses the middle of three empty stalls.
After taking a moment to catch his breath, he clears his mind, closes his eyes and focuses on the image of Professor Yamamoto’s office. With practiced skill, he wills himself there. All around him goes black for an instant, and then he disappears from the bathroom stall in a flash of light and reappears standing next to the table in the professor’s office. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the new surroundings, and he turns to the chair where he left the boy less than ten minutes ago.
Then he drops slowly to his knees.
Matt is gone. The tape that was on his wrists and ankles still hangs idly in place on the chair.
CHAPTER 69
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The gentle buzzing of the Turing Box forces Kent’s eyes to open. The thermal image scan is complete. He rolls off the mattress onto the floor and rubs his eyes. It has taken longer than planned, but the results will give him a good idea of the human and mechanical activity on the 175th floor of the MX Global building, enough at least to know where to start listening.
He puts the Turing Box on the desk. Brushing its bluescreen, he observes the TurBo passing through the colors of the spectrum, starting with deep red and moving through pink, yellow, green and blue, ending with purple. As he stares at the screen, the colors mix until shapes that vaguely resemble the layout of an office building floor begin to form. He taps fingers on the bluescreen, confirming that all the data overlays are complete.
The TurBo is good at collecting raw data from the thermal scan, but now he needs customized algorithms to analyze and organize what he’s picked up, algorithms that do not come installed on the TurBo.
He taps the screen and sprays the unscrubbed data to his slate for further analysis.
But where is the slate?
Sleep is still hanging heavy on his eyes, and his frantic search for the slate takes a full minute as a terror-induced sweat drenches his T-shirt. Just when he’s sure that he accidently left it outside his office during one of his excursions and that someone will pick it up and link all the data to him, he finds it under a large plastic carton of Chinese take-out.
The data analysis is a slow process, but by late afternoon he has a fairly complete picture of the 175th floor across the street.
And it looks like he hit the jackpot.
He leans back and studies the final product on the slate’s bluescreen, a diagram of the floor with a line drawn neatly down the middle at the point where the elevators open, dividing it into two equal sections, an east wing and a west wing. The west wing is filled with work stations arranged in a circle around a central meeting room in typical retro-corporate style. Based on heat signatures, it’s got an unusual concentration of bluescreens and electronic equipment, more indicative of a research lab than a business office.
