by Jacob Whaler
They seem to grow taller.
Matt realizes he is dropping down into the building through a metal tube. The sky above him shrinks to a tiny point and disappears entirely as the aperture closes. He tries over and over to jump away, but the connection to his Stone feels broken. Footlights come on, and he rides down in silence, counting to thirty before the motion stops. The side of the tube opens up into a door. He passes through it into a long steel corridor where Ryzaard and Naganuma are waiting.
He falls in behind them, dragging the chains attached to shackles, and is followed by two guards. There is the distinct odor of burnt ozone in the air, like the smell of an electronics laboratory. When they come to a door at the end of the corridor, Ryzaard waves his hand over a glass panel, and the door slides open without a sound.
They walk into an office.
Matt throws around a few quick glances and takes it all in. One entire wall is a window that looks out over the City. There’s a large wooden desk and chair in the middle that reminds Matt of an old movie. A red sofa sits under a Chinese wall hanging to the right, and a grandfather clock stands on the far left. The smell of tobacco hangs in the air. But the dominant feature is the breathtaking view of the City through the enormous window.
“Welcome to my office,” Ryzaard says.
Walking along the wall to the right, he places his hands on a black dot. A section slides away to reveal a square opening, and they all follow him through into another room.
“And this is your office.” Ryzaard waves his hands around and turns to look at Matt. “I trust you will find it comfortable.”
The opening closes behind them and seals shut with a sucking sound. Matt feels the subtle increase in air pressure.
It all has the look of a rich kid’s loft apartment, except there are no windows. Sweeping it with his eyes, Matt makes a quick mental inventory. It’s a circular space, about ten meters across. A shag rug covers the center of the floor like a huge blue dot, leaving a three meter space between it and the walls. There are a couple of white leather sofas long enough for Matt to sleep on, arranged in the shape of the letter L. A low table floats on a slender column in the middle. A small silver refrigerator stands next to the sofa. The entire room is encased in a floor-to-ceiling blue screen displaying a 360 degree view of a white sand beach somewhere in the Pacific.
It’s all sparsely furnished, just the way Matt likes it, and the overall impression is one of style and comfort, except for three foreign objects. A stainless steel cube positioned in the exact center of the blue rug, and two ominous looking dental chairs lined up next to the cube, side by side.
Matt flops down on a sofa. “So this is my holding cell?”
“You catch on fast,” Ryzaard says. “Make yourself comfortable and get some rest. You’ll need it in a few hours.”
“Can’t wait.”
Walking back to the door, Ryzaard is followed by Naganuma and the two guards. When they reach the door, it automatically opens. Ryzaard stops and turns back to Matt.
“You’re very lucky to be alive. Let’s hope you have the sense to cooperate.”
“What about Mr. Naganuma?” Matt stretches out on the sofa. “What’s his role in all of this?”
Ryzaard turns to walk out the door. “Be careful in your judgment of him. He’s the only reason you’re not with your mother right now.” They all walk out the door, and it seals shut behind them.
The shackles on Matt’s wrists and ankles fall off and rattle to the floor.
He looks around for a surveillance camera. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, he walks to the door. It has an air-tight seal that makes it flush with the wall when shut. He runs his fingernails across the hair-like seam, but they don’t catch. Taking a long walk around the perimeter of the room, he studies the wall for any sign of another opening, but it’s just one continuous glass bluescreen, like a millionaire’s idea of the perfect entertainment room.
Hunger draws him to the refrigerator.
Two multi-colored plates of thin-cut sashimi catch his eye. The raw fish looks and smells fresh. He grabs one of the plates, thinking he will save the other for later.
It’s first rate, maybe the best ever.
In five minutes, he’s worked through the whole plate. Tuna, salmon, squid, even some bright orange sea urchin. All of it delicious and fresh, as good as anything you could get at the Tsukiji fish markets. When the last piece goes into his mouth, his head falls back onto the sofa and eyes drop shut.
“I trust you find it to your liking?”
Matt’s eyes shoot open. A larger-than-life-size view of a woman’s face flashes on the bluescreen directly in front of him.
“So you’re watching me,” Matt says with a mouth full of blue fin. “I should have guessed.”
“Just checking,” the woman says. “My name is Alexa. I work with Dr. Ryzaard. It’s my job to make sure you are comfortable during your stay with us.”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “I’m feeling a little cooped up in here. A walk outside in the fresh air would do me some good. Can you arrange that?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Alexa says. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
“How?”
“Just say it. Someone is listening and watching. All the time.”
The image of Alexa fades back into the Pacific island scene.
Matt relaxes his body, lets his head rest on the sofa, closes his eyes again, and starts counting breaths, forcing his fists to uncurl.
CHAPTER 87
Kent needs the architectural plans to the MX Global building. He spends a few hours lurking in the more seedy corridors of the Mesh, but comes up empty. If they ever existed, they’ve been scrubbed away.
And then he remembers.
Twenty years ago, when he was a young associate at Myers & Sullivan, one of the partners put him on a fast-track real estate deal, and he found himself doing mind-numbing due diligence at 3:00 in the morning on a hundred gigabytes of top-secret client files. There were pages and pages of architectural drawings for the buildings in the area of Manhattan around MX Global. Reaching the point of utter exhaustion, he ignored firm policy and copied the files to his jax to complete the work at home. Over the years, each subsequent jax was cloned to the prior one until he forgot about the data. On that day when he bolted from the firm and hit the road with Matt, he dumped the contents of his jax onto a secure Mesh-point before throwing the device away.
Accessing the same old Mesh-point, he finds the files intact and spends the rest of the evening blowing through them again, just like twenty years before. Among them is a set of old architectural drawings for the lower ten stories of MX Global corporate headquarters from a time when another company occupied the premises. They had been there all this time.
He studies the 3D layout on his slate, and it’s all there. Major structural design, mechanical systems, elevator shafts, plumbing, electrical. There’s no guarantee that it’s still the same after two or three decades. All of it may have changed over the years.
Hopefully, it’s close enough.
The building pulls electricity from an independent set of on-site power generators located a few floors above ground level. Staggered elevators run the length of the building, making it necessary to change at least three times on a trip from bottom to top.
After a couple of hours, Kent takes a break from studying the plans and pulls up a detailed layout of the 175th floor generated by a slate-based algorithm using the latest sound readings from the Turing Box. He can see the round space next to Ryzaard’s office. Soundings taken from just two days prior had shown this spot to contain random lines spread out evenly, like the static on antique televisions, the telltale sign of dead space. This time around, there are no such lines, nothing at all. Kent runs the algorithm again and gets the same result. The white space means there’s no sound, no vibrations of any kind traveling through that particular space.
In other words, it’s become a sound-proof room.
Kent checks internal conversations he captured from inside Ryzaard’s office again, and it becomes clear.
It’s the room where Ryzaard plans to hold his prisoner, the young man with the rare rock. Detailed instructions for its construction are neatly laid out in the voice transcripts. Heavy lines lead to the room, and then disappear into empty space. It’s hard to say what they are, but they have the look of power cables.
Why would Ryzaard need to feed so much power in a sound-proof room?
Kent checks the most recent voice transcripts, downloading them from the Turing Box and hunching over the bluescreen of the slate, looking for the voice of Ryzaard, who seems to have been gone for several hours.
Then he finds what he’s looking for. The voiceprint protocol identifies Ryzaard in his office. Kent backs up to the point where Ryzaard enters his office and plugs in the earphones and listens.
Sets of feet enter into the sound space.
“This is my office,” Ryzaard says.
The feet shuffle through the space. The sound analysis indicates a high probability that it’s five people walking. Another door opens, and the entire group enters into the round space. The door seals shut behind them with a sucking sound.
Then there’s nothing but silence.
Kent listens intently for several minutes. Just as he reaches his hand out to turn off the earphones, he hears the door unseal itself and open up.
“You’re very lucky to be alive. Let’s hope you have the sense to cooperate.”
It’s the voice of Ryzaard.
The door seals shut again, and footsteps move into the interior of Ryzaard’s office.
Kent pulls up the sound analysis. It says there are four people walking, one less than the number that entered the round room a minute ago. One stayed behind, or had been left behind, in the soundproof room. The one who Ryzaard said was lucky to be alive.
The young man with the rock.
Kent closes his eyes and listens to the conversation taking place in Ryzaard’s office.
CHAPTER 88
The two guards walk out into the corridor, leaving Ryzaard in his office with Naganuma. There’s a long silence between them. Naganuma stands in place near the sofa, and Ryzaard moves close to the window, looking out on the city.
“I still have my doubts about this.” Ryzaard raises his chin in a subtle show of defiance as his arms drop to his side. “You had better be right.”
Naganuma leans close to the Chinese painting above the sofa, studying its exquisite details. “We have an agreement. I promised to bring the boy and his Stone to you. You promised not to kill him.” He speaks calmly, staring forward.
“Yes.” Ryzaard turns and drops down into the high back chair behind the desk. “We have an agreement. If the boy cooperates.”
Moving his hands along the painting, Naganuma looks as if he’s reading the impressions of the ink on the yellowed paper with the tips of his fingers. “I would advise you not to attempt to change the terms.”
“Let me make myself perfectly clear.” As he swivels in the chair, Ryzaard eyes the Zeus statue on the desk. “If the boy refuses to cooperate, I will torture him until he agrees. If he doesn’t agree, I will kill him. Simple as that.” He reaches into a drawer for a cigarette. “You are more of a fool than even I thought if you expected anything less of me.”
Naganuma’s eyes narrow to thin dark strips, and his fingers snap shut like a vise into a large fist, crumpling the ancient paper of the Chinese painting in his hand and ripping half of it from the wall. He turns, stares at Ryzaard and drops the torn fragment to the floor.
And then he vanishes.
Seconds later he reappears at the side of Ryzaard, staring down into his upturned face. “Fool!” Naganuma says. “Your answer to everything is always the same. Death and killing.” He towers over Ryzaard and speaks through gritted teeth, spittle flying out of his mouth. “You judge the boy too quickly. Push him too hard. Scare him off. No wonder he refuses you. Have you not seen the power he wields for one so young? Has there ever been another that learned so quickly, that was so prepared to take up a Stone?”
Ryzaard’s fingers curl until his nails bite into the palms of his hands. He slowly turns in the swivel chair, stares out the window and puts his back to Naganuma, letting silence fill the space between them. The next instant, his sitting form dissolves from the chair, and he’s suddenly standing face to face with Naganuma, holding the old Boker dagger in his hand under Naganuma’s chin, its point millimeters from drawing blood.
Naganuma is unflinching and looks through Ryzaard’s eyes as if there’s nothing there. “Try it.” he says. “You know you will fail.”
Gripping the handle of the knife, Ryzaard’s fingers are white against the black wood. “No one calls me a fool.” His voice is calm and steady. “And no one tells me what to do.” Lowering the dagger, a long exhale flows out like a valve releasing pressure. “I have kept my part of the bargain. I have kept all my bargains with you. Since you made contact with me, I have helped you build hundreds of Shinto shrines around the world. Your religion is finally beginning to break out of Japan. All thanks to MX Global funding.”
“And where would you be now if it were not for me and everything I have taught you?” Naganuma takes a step back and turns to look out the window over Ryzaard’s shoulder. “Still an unknown professor at some forgotten university in Europe, playing parlor tricks with the Stone. Without me, you would have never made it to Oxford or this company.”
A visible wave of relaxation moves over Ryzaard. He drops the knife and turns to stand, shoulder to shoulder with Naganuma, at the window. “Our partnership has been mutually beneficial for many years. For that I thank you. But you will not interfere with my plans for the boy. There is too much at stake. I will not allow anything or anyone to stop me from bringing Paradise to the earth. The future of the human race depends on it.”
Naganuma’s body tenses. “The boy has great strength. I have tested him and seen it myself.”
“I see. You took him to your little shack in the woods, showed him the wonders of the Stones, taught him many things, opened his eyes so that he can see as you do.”
“Just as I did for you many years ago.”
“You are a foolish old man, too generous with what you know, too willing to trust, to take risks.” Ryzaard’s lower lip shoots out, and the top one joins it in a snarl. “The higher knowledge of the Stones must remain ours, and ours alone. To do otherwise is suicidal.”
“You judge him too harshly.” Naganuma shakes his head. “Your desire to keep all things to yourself, your thirst for power, it has blinded you so that you no longer see.”
“You are wrong,” says Ryzaard. “I see only too clearly what must be done to save this world.”
Naganuma breathes in and out with focused attention. “Do you still see the white lights in your dreams?”
“The white lights.” The snarl on Ryzaard’s face fades into a half smile as he repeats the words to himself. “I saw the Allehonen often when I was a younger man. Their promises of love and peace and the joy of creation are nothing more than a seductive lie. They require too much. Surrender of the self. Submission of the will. It is the path of weakness and leads only to suffering. My eyes have been opened to a better path.”
“You speak of the Others.”
“I speak of my own path.”
Naganuma turns and walks away from the window, back to the sofa. He bends down and picks up the crumpled wall hanging in his hands. “Are you not afraid?”
“What is there to fear?”
“You have seen the Others, as have I. Their path is a dark and cold one.” Naganuma unfolds the old yellow paper, smoothing it out with his hands. “You want to become as they are?”
Ryzaard chuckles. “You don’t understand, do you? I will become better than they are. I will have power and control beyond anything that can be imagined. Power over suffering, power over death. The power to bring Paradise to the w
orld at last, fulfilling the dreams of mankind. I will follow my own path and rule over both the Allehonen and the Others.”
The white robes hanging from Naganuma shuffle in silence. He stands and presses the wrinkled paper back onto the wall so that it fits neatly under the fragment from which it was ripped away. His eyes close and he draws in a deep breath. The two pieces of ancient paper join seamlessly together, and the entire length of the painting seems to relax as the wrinkles flow out until it is whole again, restored to its original condition.
Naganuma turns back to Ryzaard. “I tried to teach you, but I fear I have lost you.”
“Trust me,” Ryzaard says. “You certainly have not lost me. I am perfectly aware of what I am doing. In time, you will understand. And then you will thank me for being the one to see clearly.” He picks up his jax and brings it close to his mouth. “Alexa, please come show my good friend, Mr. Naganuma, to his quarters. He is very tired and needs to rest before we begin the procedure on our new guest.”
“You’re talking about Matt Newmark?” Alexa says. “Or his girlfriend, Jessica?”
“Both, of course.” Ryzaard clears his throat and scans the room. “And never mention their names aloud again. I refuse to dignify anyone opposed to me with the use of their name. They are to be stripped of their humanity and obliterated from memory.” His eyes float over and lock onto Naganuma.
“My apologies,” Alexa says. “I’ll be more careful in the future.”
A minute later, the door opens, and Alexa enters. Smiling at Naganuma, she gestures for him to follow her.
He says nothing and walks out of the room, casting one last glaring glance at Ryzaard.
CHAPTER 89
“So, are you going to kill him, too?” Alexa flops down on the sofa.
Ryzaard swivels in his chair so that he’s facing her. There’s a cigarette between his fingers, and he blows smoke up to the ceiling. “Who? Naganuma, the old priest?” He takes a long drag, holds it, and lets the gray fog curl out of his nose and mouth. “It may come to that, but I hope not. He knows so much and could be very useful. I would hate to lose him.”
