by Jacob Whaler
For a split second, his gaze is drawn up to the ceiling of the station through hundreds of meters of concrete, glass and steel as his mind reaches out to Matt.
Stay alive until I can get to you.
He listens for an answer, but doesn’t feel anything as he’s swept into a flow of human bodies moving onto the platform and heading for the escalators up. Pushing gently through the mass of flesh, he works his way to the right. As he nears the edge, he slips out of the main current and drifts off down a dark hallway, past a bathroom and around a corner.
If the building plans are still correct, there will be a utility entrance down this hall. If the door is still there, it will be unguarded, maybe forgotten.
Kent swipes a finger down the side of his jax and studies the drawings displayed on the holo screen. It casts a green glow on his face in the dark.
Audible footsteps and voices come down the hall behind him.
His heart takes a long rest before it begins to beat again. The game could be up if someone is tailing him. In desperation, he moves further into the darkness until he bumps up against an abrupt wall. The hallway simply terminates in a dead end. Sounds drift closer. Kent tries to flatten himself against the wall, but the daypack is still on his back, making him stick out.
A young man sporting sunglasses, probably in his early twenties, walks around the corner just fifteen meters away. He looks straight ahead, directly at Kent, and keeps walking closer, his hands making karate chop motions in front of him.
Kent holds his breath.
A loud voice penetrates the silence. “Hey Demetrius, where you going?”
The young man stops and spins around.
“The bathroom’s back here,” the voice says. “You walked right past it.”
“Sorry, man. Guess I just got too much into this movie I’m watching. I love these CineViews. Feels like I’m really there, part of the action.” The young man disappears back around the corner.
As the voices draw farther away, Kent’s pulse feels like a Japanese taiko drum. He exhales and slows the beating. When the voices fade to nothing and he’s again bathed in silence, his fingers go down to his side and find a raised line on the wall behind him. Turning around, he steps back and follows the metal seam with his hand. It runs from floor to ceiling where the utility door has been welded shut.
“Bingo,” he says to himself. “Found it.”
With his backpack on the floor, he reaches in and finds the tube of Corrizol. He squeezes out a fine bead of it on the welded seam, drawing a large rectangle on the wall. With his eyes now adjusted to the darkness, he steps back and inspects his work to make sure he’s covered the old weld.
It will take a few minutes to work its magic.
In the silent darkness, images of Matt fill his mind. He’s six years old and making sand castles with his mother at the beach. Then he’s in fourth grade, legs running hard, the fastest little sweeper on the Hawthorne soccer team. Kent can see the look of confusion in Matt’s eyes as they sprint through the JFK Airport on their way to a flight that will take them away from the only home the little boy has ever known. He keeps asking where mom is, and all Kent can say is that she won’t be able to come on this flight.
And then he sees Matt with his overstuffed backpack disappearing around a corner at the Denver Airport only a few days ago on his way to Japan. Sweat runs into his eyes. Nausea builds in his belly.
He sees Ryzaard with his silver goatee standing over Matt with a long thin blade in his hand.
Violence stirs in his stomach, and he twists to the right and empties its contents onto the concrete floor, leaving a vile taste on his tongue.
It was a mistake to let Matt go.
He moves a meter away from the smell of his own puke and drops down with his back to the wall, glancing at the time on his jax.
And waits.
CHAPTER 94
The door opens.
There’s an immediate drop in air pressure that registers in Matt’s ears. His eyes look up. One of the burly guards walks in.
Alexa follows with a perky smile on her face. “Right this way.” She looks behind her at someone standing outside the entrance and motions for them to come into the room. Her artificially high-pitched voice tells Matt that she’s playing some sort of deception.
“Jessica!” he yells. “It’s a trap!”
The next instant, Jessica stumbles into the room with another guard pushing her from behind, a look of confusion on her face.
The door slides noiselessly shut behind her.
“What’s going—” Jessica begins to speak, but stops when she sees Matt sitting in the dental chair.
“Glad you could join us,” Ryzaard says. “Please come in. There is someone here for you to meet.”
Their eyes find each other, and Jessica runs to Matt. Then her eyes drop to the binders on his wrists and ankles. She stops. “Matt, what’s going on? You just sent me a message a few minutes ago. I thought you were in Jap—” The guard pushes her again from behind. “Is this some kind of joke?” she says.
“Jess, it’s a trap. They’ve been using my jax to talk to you.” Matt’s stomach turns at the thought of what Ryzaard might do to her. “I’m sorry.”
Ryzaard speaks up. “Please, come over here and have a seat.”
Standing where she is, Jessica refuses to move. The two guards behind her each grab an arm and a leg, and lift her squirming body vertically off the floor, placing her firmly and roughly in the chair next to Matt.
“Thank you,” says Ryzaard. He touches a finger to the gold card, and the metal binders light up, closing on Jessica’s ankles and wrists.
Matt looks over and sees Jessica’s hand close to his. Clasping it tightly, he feels her return the grip. The warmth of her skin and the strength of her hand allow him to relax a little.
As his eyes dart around the room, his mind races to find a way to fight back, a way to protect Jessica. He wishes he could explain it all to her now, about the Stones and the Allehonen. But there isn’t time. She’s here because of him, and now it’s up to him to find a way out.
Her eyes find his, and her lips start moving in silence.
What’s going on? Who are they?
Staring back at Jess, Matt answers in the same way.
Can’t explain. They want me to do something I can’t. Trust me.
There’s a brief smile on her face that kills Matt. He wonders if she knows he has no idea what’s going to happen or what to do.
Twisting her body in the chair, Jessica looks squarely at Ryzaard. “You can’t do this to us.” She tries to work her wrists and ankles loose, and then flashes defiant eyes at everyone in the room but Matt.
Ryzaard smiles, walks close to her and slaps her face, leaving a red mark. “You’ve probably heard that MX Global is building a new office tower on the other side of the Hudson. They just started pouring concrete. It would be a pity to end up as part of the foundation, don’t you think?”
Blood trickles down the corner of her mouth. She licks it and glares up at her tormentor, saying nothing.
Arching his back off the chair, Matt tries to move, tries to get free, tries to do something. He settles back down in frustration. “Jess, don’t resist. Just do what he says. It’ll be all right.”
Ryzaard grins at Matt. “Good advice, my young friend. And entirely correct.” He turns to the two guards. “Please follow me out.” He walks past Alexa to the other side of the room, trailed by the two men and the eyes of Matt and Jessica.
A smirk snakes across Alexa’s face.
Just before they get to the door, Ryzaard’s body turns into a blur of movement. When he steps a few paces back, the two guards drop to the floor clutching their chests. Bloody wounds cause a scarlet stain to spread on their shirts.
Ryzaard bends down and wipes the blade of the dagger on the sleeve of one of the fallen men. “My apologies. Alexa, please see that this mess is cleaned up.” He begins to walk back in the direction of Matt and Jes
sica.
Alexa nods and steps out of the way onto the blue rug. Ryzaard passes by on the outer edge of the room.
He stops in front of the two dental chairs. “Now that we are all here, let me explain how this is going to work.” Ryzaard looks down at his feet and steps away from the blue rug. Then he pulls a thin gold card out of his pocket and touches a red spot painted on its surface.
The stainless steel cube near the base of Matt’s chair begins to purr softly. The corners of Ryzaard’s lips turn up slightly. He takes the little stone box out of another pocket, flips open the lid on its tiny hinges, tips it upside down and catches the Stone as it rolls out. The lid snaps shut. He lets the box drop to the floor.
The next instant, Matt reaches out to his Stone and strains for the connection. There is only the slightest of links, a thin strand of spider silk compared to what should be a steel cable.
One eyebrow rises as Ryzaard makes eye contact with Matt.
Ryzaard pulls out his own Stone and stands there with one in each hand, looking back and forth, admiring them.
His eyes move to Jessica. “This is power.” A grin of child-like wonder flickers across his face. “Watch carefully.”
He appears and vanishes in several places, bouncing around the room, like an ancient movie reel, skipping frames.
Alexa rolls her eyes.
When Ryzaard is done, he jumps into view from nowhere, standing directly in front of Matt and Jessica.
A strange wheezing sound floats into Matt’s ears, and he turns to see Jessica in the chair next to him, struggling for breath as her chest heaves up and down. Matt remembers her asthma. It must have been triggered by the shock of being thrown into the dental chair next to Matt, compounded by the sight of Ryzaard flitting around the room.
As Matt squeezes her hand, she grips him back hard, and then slowly releases.
“She’s fading. It’s asthma,” he yells. Taking in a deep breath to calm himself, he tries to reach out to the Stone and somehow use it to heal her. But there’s not enough of a connection. Its power is useless to him.
Ryzaard calmly turns his back to Jessica. “Jing-wei.”
A few meters in front of them, the enlarged face of a Chinese woman flashes on the bluescreen that forms the wall. “Yes, Dr. Ryzaard?”
“We’re having a little problem here. Asthma, I believe. Can you help?”
Jing-wei looks down from the bluescreen. Jessica’s face is a distinctly gray color, and her chest is no longer moving up and down.
“Just a few more seconds.” Jing-wei’s fingers move across a slate, eyes sweeping back and forth, up and down, scanning for information. “Here it is.” She turns and presses a finger to the slate.
A buzzing sound, almost like a bee, comes out of the arm of the dental chair where Jessica lies. A small compartment opens, and a stainless steel tube emerges to press against the skin of Jessica’s bicep. There is a quick burst of compressed air, and the tube withdraws into the arm of the chair.
Jessica’s chest relaxes, and she draws in several deep breaths. At first, her breathing is rough, but it slows over time.
“I hope you’re feeling better.” Ryzaard looks at Jessica with what appears to be genuine concern in his eyes. “Now let’s continue with the exercise.” He turns back to Jing-wei’s face on the wall. “Elsa, are you there?”
Elsa Bergman’s upper body comes onto the bluescreen, framed in a square next to Jing-wei’s. “Yes, Professor Ryzaard, I’m here. Ready to go.”
“Good.” Ryzaard turns to Matt and lobs his Stone to him.
It falls squarely into Matt’s right hand, and his fingers instinctively snap shut around it. A sense of warmth and comfort spreads out from his hand, and his heart rate and breathing begin to slow. This time he feels the Stone, alive and connected. Why would Ryzaard just give it to him? Perhaps it’s some kind of trick.
All eyes in the room turn to Matt.
“Don’t be afraid, it’s not a trap. I want you to use it.” Ryzaard stands there, staring down at Matt with a look of expectation.
His eyelids float softly down, and Matt finds the place on the beach, next to his mother. The surf is coming in and out, and a feeling of harmony and balance soaks through his body. It’s been a long time since he felt this content. Reaching out with his mind, he grabs on to the tension around him and holds it.
When his eyes open, Jessica is motionless, as still as a picture. So is Alexa.
But not Ryzaard. He moves along the wall. “Feels good, doesn’t it, Matt? To have the Stone again. To feel the power again. It feels right.”
Matt doesn’t answer. Holding on to the sound of the surf, he thinks of the boulder on the mountaintop in Japan where he saw the Allehonen. His fingers close tightly around Jessica’s hand. There’s no response. She’s still in time-freeze.
I hope I can take her with me when I jump.
He takes in another breath and, in his mind’s eye, sees himself standing on the top of the bounder with Jess. Willing himself to go there, he braces himself.
But nothing happens.
Maybe it’s too far away.
He remembers the long hallway outside of Ryzaard’s office, the one he came through a few hours ago after getting off the transport. If they could make it there and find the elevators, maybe they could get out. Taking more time, he can see the corridor and its stainless steel walls in his mind. Once again he relaxes into the image of him and Jessica standing between the walls, walking out.
Nothing.
Ryzaard turns his back to Matt. “The Stone doesn’t quite work as it did before. You can stop time, a rather simple matter, but not perform the higher functions, like jumping.” He walks back and forth in front of Matt like a professor delivering a lecture. “You have Naganuma to thank for that. He supplied me with one of those little boxes that shield the Stone. With the help of my science team, we began to collect data on the Stone and the little box. A few days ago, we had a breakthrough.” Ryzaard points to the silver cube in the middle of the rug. “You’ve seen one of these before. It imitates the effect of the box, if you have a strong enough power source. We can disable the Stone completely, or modulate the effect so that only limited use of the Stone is possible. I won’t bore you with the details.”
Matt lets go of the image of the beach. As he does, Jessica’s body moves again, and there’s a startled look on her face. He must have moved slightly, and she no doubt saw it as a sudden jerk, as if a movie skipped multiple frames.
“Matt, how did you—”
“He has a Stone just like mine,” Ryzaard interrupts. “Would you like to see him use it? We’ll have a demonstration right now.” Ryzaard turns to the image of Elsa Bergman on the wall behind him. “Elsa, everything ready?”
“Ready, Professor.”
“Good. Please put the trading algorithm on our screen and take us through.”
Next to Elsa’s face on the wall, a box appears with streaming data, numbers and charts. Matt recognizes the stock symbols and real-time quotes.
Clearing her throat, Elsa begins to speak. “Dr. Ryzaard’s Stone has certain unique properties that allow us to predict stock price fluctuations with a high degree of accuracy.” Her voice comes in short spurts, like a pressure valve releasing steam, with a trace of a Scandinavian accent. “We beam a data stream of stock quotes into the Stone.” Her thin eyebrows jump up a notch. “It responds with its own data stream, corresponding to future movements of the stock. The results will be on-screen.”
All eyes turn to the wall.
Elsa clears her throat. “For this demonstration, we have selected Red Hill Dynamics, a stock with unusually high volume and volatility. Here are the real-time stock price movements on the French Bourse as we speak.” A green line snakes across the bottom of the bluescreen. “Future stock prices as predicted by the Stone are shown in red.” A red line shoots out to the right. As they watch, the green line catches up to the red one and follows the jagged red path precisely, like one snake sw
allowing another. There is silence for almost a minute as all eyes track what is happening on the screen.
“As you see, we can accurately predict stock movement approximately thirteen seconds in advance.”
Holding the gold card in his hand, Ryzaard’s finger slides along its surface.
There is a subtle shift in Matt’s connection to the Stone. Wrapping his fingers more tightly around it, he lets his eyelids drop down and relaxes into the familiar state of mind to stop time, but this time it doesn’t work.
“Very impressive, as always, Elsa,” Ryzaard turns back to face Matt. “Now let us see what happens when we add another Stone to the mix. After all, that is why you are still alive.”
“Just a minute while we recalibrate the settings.” Elsa taps a slate with one hand. “The second Stone has been detected. We will proceed with the trading algorithm.”
Matt looks at Jessica and smiles, mouthing the words trust me, and then stares straight ahead at the bluescreen. In his mind, he imagines a protective barrier around his Stone.
A green line appears showing the real time stock movements, and, to the right, a red line, the same as before.
“Just a minute,” Elsa says. “Let me make a few adjustments.” She picks up the slate and sits back, eyes sweeping rapidly left to right. A tense silence fills the room.
“What seems to be the problem?” Ryzaard says.
On the wall screen, Elsa looks up. “I don’t understand. The algorithm detects the second Stone, but it doesn’t seem to be responding.”
Ryzaard slowly turns to face Matt.
Matt cocks one eyebrow and grins. “Is there a problem, Dr. Ryzaard?” Sarcasm drips from his voice.
“Jing-wei,” Ryzaard says, without taking his eyes off Matt.
“Yes, Dr. Ryzaard?”
“Please prepare the injection.”
The Chinese girl hesitates. “Are you sure, Dr. Ryzaard?” A look of concern flashes across her face.
“Just do it. Now.”
“Got it.” She turns around in her chair and bends down, going out of view for a few seconds, and then pops back up. “All ready to go.”
