by Jacob Whaler
A low humming sound drifts into Matt’s ears to his left, and he realizes that it’s coming from close to Jessica. A compartment opens along the arm of her chair. She tries to pull away, but the binders on her wrist don’t allow any movement. In a blur, a slender needle slides out and into Jessica’s forearm. As it withdraws back into the chair, a tiny spot of blood beads up on her skin.
“No. Don’t.” she says. It only takes seconds for her to start gasping for air. Her eyes drift over to Matt, pleading for help.
“What’s going on?” Matt yells, speaking to Ryzaard’s back. “What have you put in her.”
Ryzaard stands unmoving. “A simple injection of highly concentrated arachis oil.”
“What do you mean?” Matt looks at Jessica struggling for breath.
“Peanuts,” Jessica gasps. Her lips move as she tries to say more, but can’t.
“Let’s see,” Ryzaard says. “She will lose consciousness and stop breathing within a minute and a half. It will take four or five more for oxygen deprivation to cause irreversible brain damage. Peanut allergies are a terrible thing.” Ryzaard speaks in a clinical monotone voice and looks directly into Matt’s eyes. “I’ll be in my office if you’d like to discuss this further.” Ryzaard turns to Alexa. “Come with me. Let’s give them the privacy they need to think this over.”
The two of them walk out the door, and it seals shut behind them.
CHAPTER 95
The sound of distant voices plays in the diode in Kent’s ear.
“Are you really going to kill the girl?” a woman says.
“Without hesitation, if that’s what it takes to get the boy to cooperate.” Ryzaard speaks evenly and clearly. “The value of her life quickly goes to zero as he hinders our work.”
The woman speaks again, this time with a sense of urgency. “Better turn the holo on so we can hear what he has to say.” There’s the sound of something metallic dropping onto a wooden surface like a desk.
The water bottle in Kent’s hand slips out of his fingers to the floor. He’s frozen in a sitting position, unable to move, concentrating every faculty on the sound in his ear.
Ryzaard clears his throat. “There is no need for urgency when you hold all the cards. That is one of the advantages of power.”
“She’s dying!” Matt’s voice breaks through, a mixture of screams and sobs. “Please come back. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t let her die.”
“Sounds like the young man has come to his senses,” Ryzaard says.
The sound of crisp footsteps echoes across a floor, followed by the faint swishing of a door opening.
The voices fade into silence.
Rage builds inside Kent and pushes to get out. His lungs feel like they are bursting. He wants to vent his feelings by yelling loud enough for Ryzaard to hear, but he knows that will only draw unwanted attention. Pressing his teeth together and flexing his jaw muscles, he fumbles in the dark for the water bottle and stands up. With labored breathing and a wild pulse, he rummages through the backpack, finds the black suction holders, and presses them against the old door.
The Corrizol should have weakened the weld seam by now. He pushes the suction holders against the wall and pulls hard.
The metal gives slightly around the edges.
Taking in a deep breath, Kent rocks the metal sheeting using his body weight. In a few seconds, he works it free and moves it to the side, revealing a dark interior space. He offers silent thanks that he hasn’t opened up into a conference room full of live people. For now, he prefers to stay well hidden. Slipping a shaky hand into his pocket, he takes out a small infrared diode and presses it to his forehead. With a single tap, it turns on, and he slips IR goggles from the backpack over his eyes. As he moves into the darkness, his head sweeps back and forth to survey the room.
He doesn’t like what he sees.
According to the old design plans, it should be a utility closet full of pipes and wiring. But it’s not. Instead, he sees a large empty space with a thick layer of dust on everything. In the darkness with only his IR goggles to see through, it’s like walking around on the bottom of the ocean floor.
He walks into the stifling heat of the room. The walls are bare except for a row of broken and cracked mirrors on his right. A line of fist-sized holes are punched at waist level. The utility closet must have been widened and turned into a restroom at some point in the last thirty years. He tries to let his shoulders relax down as he walks deeper into the room, searching for an entrance on the opposite wall.
Then he finds it, an old metal door complete with a doorknob.
Smiling to himself, he wipes the sweat from his eyes and moves quickly across the open floor. On the way, he reaches for the water bottle, but it’s gone. He must have left it back at the entrance.
He turns to walk back and instantly freezes. The black outline of a security guard stands in the opening, a pistol in one hand and Kent’s water bottle in the other. As Kent becomes a statue in the middle of the floor and stares, the security guard reaches into his pocket. With eyes squinting in the dark, it’s clear he’s about to pull out a flashlight.
It’s now or never.
Kent grabs his jax and swipes his thumb across the top.
The security guard finds his flashlight and turns it on.
Kent’s heart stops as a sharp beam of light penetrates into the room and slowly sweeps along the wall five meters to his right.
A jax crackles with static.
“Jack, where are you?” It’s a voice of desperation yelling, clearly audible in the silence.
The guard lets the beam of his flashlight drop to the floor. “I’m down at base level five. It looks like—”
“We need you back up here, Jack, right now. All hell’s breaking loose.”
“What?” As the guard turns around, he swings the flashlight and the beam cuts through Kent’s eyes. “What’s going on, man?” He steps back out through the entrance.
“The security portal’s going crazy. None of the badges are working. Everyone is triggering class D alerts, even the guards, like they’re all carrying explosives and trying to blow up the building. It’s rush hour, man. We have to process each one manually until the system’s back up. It could take hours. We need you now!”
“But I thought I saw—”
“I said now! Get your butt up here.”
“Copy that.” The security guard turns and moves out of view. “I’m on my way.”
The footsteps echo down the corridor and then go silent.
The interruption has caused a sudden change of plans. That little grey lump Kent dropped on the sidewalk at the entrance to the building is doing its job right now. But he set it off sooner than planned.
There’s less than ten minutes to get to the power generators.
Kent runs across the floor to the doorknob he saw earlier and twists it hard.
CHAPTER 96
Matt grips Jessica’s limp hand and faces Ryzaard. “What do you want me to do?”
“Cooperate.”
Jessica’s eyelids drop shut, and her fingers slowly uncurl from Matt’s hand.
“How?” Matt screams.
Ryzaard speaks slowly and carefully. “Open your Stone to me. Stop resisting. Trust me.”
“How can I trust you?” Nausea washes over Matt. The room feels like it’s shifting around him.
“You need to find a way. The choice is yours.” Ryzaard looks down on Jessica. “A pity to see her die so young.”
Jessica’s arm drops down and bangs against the side of the bed. Her head falls back and rolls to one side, facing Matt. A clear liquid runs out of the corner of her mouth.
The Stone feels heavy. Matt relaxes his grip on it and closes his eyes, trying to imagine himself walking up to Ryzaard, dropping on one knee, and opening his palms as he lifts the Stone up in both hands. He bows before Ryzaard and offers the Stone to him, opening his whole soul to him.
Take it.
“I’m pi
cking up a second signal.” Elsa Bergman’s blond head appears on the bluescreen. “It’s coming in weakly, but getting stronger. Patching into the trading algorithm.”
The red line at the bottom of the screen shoots out to the right by more than a meter.
Elsa clears her throat. “Increased power confirmed. The predictive algorithm now extends out in excess of two minutes.”
“Very good.” Ryzaard turns to Jing-wei’s face on the wall. “Do the epinephrine injection.”
“Got it.” Without waiting, Jing-wei’s fingers brush a slate on her lap, as if she’s been waiting to do it.
They hear the whirring noise again. A steel tube with a needle on the end jumps out of the chair near Jessica’s leg and presses against it, followed by a hissing sound. Her eyes remained closed, but her mouth opens and gasps for air. In a few seconds, her chest is heaving up and down, breathing deeply.
With his hands together, Ryzaard turns to Matt. “Very good, my young friend. You learn quickly.” He glances back at the screen where the red line is running far out along the bottom. “The old manuscripts are true. With two Stones, you get a tenfold increase in power. A full magnitude. Amazing.”
Suddenly, Matt understands how Ryzaard is going to play this game. “So, you’re using Jessica to force me.”
Ryzaard faces the bluescreen. “If necessary, yes. But in time I hope you will come to see things as I do and want to play a more active role. But either way, Naganuma was right. The Stones are much more powerful this way. He was right to not kill you. Shall we try something else?”
“How about the location algorithm?” The face of Diego Lopez appears on the wall next to Jing-wei. “With ten times the power, I’ll bet we can locate other unprotected Stones in minutes instead of hours.”
“I was thinking the same thing. It will make the collecting of the remainder of the Stones much easier.” Ryzaard looks down and steps off the rug. “But let’s work on that a bit later. There’s something else I want to try.” He turns his gaze to Elsa. “Please continue with the upgraded trading program. See if the additional Stone allows us to increase the number of stocks and derivatives that can be traded simultaneously. I expect it will.”
“I’ll jump on it right now.” Elsa’s face fades from the bluescreen.
Diego’s face appears on the wall screen in profile. He’s turning his head to look at a large slate on his desk, a deep furrow between his eyebrows. “Dr. Ryzaard, an alert just got issued for the entire building. Looks like some sort of interruption at the security portal in the lobby. They’re telling us to—”
“Deal with it. I don’t want to hear about it,” Ryzaard waves a hand in front of his face. “I’m in the middle of a breakthrough here.”
“OK, but—”
“I said deal with it.” Ryzaard slips the gold card out of his pocket and touches it.
“But Dr. Ryzaard—” Jing-wei says.
The bluescreen goes white and silent as she and Diego vanish.
Pacing back and forth with nervous energy, Ryzaard stops squarely in front of Matt. “Now then, there is a little experiment I’ve been wanting to try for some time. It could change everything, and I think it might work.” He shifts his gaze to Jessica, who is breathing normally with her eyes still closed. “I assume that I will have your full cooperation.”
Matt feels a shift around him, and the room goes silent. He glances at Jessica. Her chest is no longer rising and falling with the rhythm of breath. For an instant, he fears she has died, but then he notices that Alexa is also standing still. Ryzaard has stopped time. He and Matt are the only things moving in the room.
“Ever heard of Marcus Tullius Cicero?” Ryzaard says.
“Cicero? Of course.”
“They say he was one of the greatest orators in the history of the Roman Empire, perhaps the world.” Ryzaard puts his hand in his pockets, steps back off the rug and walks back and forth between Matt and the bluescreen. “Ever read any of his speeches?”
Matt wonders why Ryzaard is talking about Cicero, of all people. But he thinks it best to play along and wait for an opening, a way to escape.
“I must have studied him back in my freshman Western Civilization class,” Matt says.
“Can you remember any of the speeches or tell me anything about even one of them?”
“Is this a test?”
“No.” Ryzaard stops and turns. “The point is that his speeches are a complete bore. I’ve read them all. Historians like to talk about his meteoric rise from humble origins to consul of the Roman Empire, holding each position along the way at the youngest age allowed. Of course, they all give the credit to his phenomenal speaking ability. But I don’t buy it.”
Ryzaard’s voice becomes background noise. Matt relaxes into his breath. In his mind, he sees the hilltop where the Allehonen came to him. Gripping Jessica’s cold hand tightly, he wills himself to jump there, just as he jumped from the sea to the little house on Naganuma’s world. He can feel the Stone, almost like it’s alive.
But nothing happens.
It’s like reaching a hand into a river and trying to grab it. He can feel the wetness of the current rushing through his fingers, but can’t get a grip on it.
A hand strikes him across the face. “Stop trying to leave. It won’t work.” Ryzaard towers over him.
Matt raises his eyebrows in feigned innocence. “So how did Cicero do it?” he says.
“Let me show you. I’ll need your help.”
Matt notices that Ryzaard steps on the dark blue area of the rug and then immediately draws back. “What do you want me to do?”
“An ancient Egyptian manuscript speaks of a man who rose to become Pharaoh over all the land, whose words had such an overpowering effect on listeners, that it was impossible for them to disagree with him.”
Matt nods his head. “He had a Stone?”
“No, he had two of them. Or rather, I suspect he had one and his son had one.”
Now Matt understands what Ryzaard is driving at. “So you want to try it out?”
“Precisely.”
“How?”
Ryzaard walks around the outer edge of the room to the side of Jessica and Matt. After a moment’s hesitation, he steps quickly onto the blue part of the rug. The sounds in the room come back for a few seconds, like someone is turning the volume back up. Ryzaard goes to the front of the refrigerator and peeks inside. He quickly shuts the door and steps off the rug.
The room is silent again.
Ryzaard glances at Alexa, standing near the door. “She hates anything raw. Especially fish. Always orders her steaks well done. Won’t even eat an apple or carrot unless it’s cooked.” He laughs. “She told me that she once bit into some rotten Albacore tuna as a child and has not been able to stomach the stuff ever since.”
“What are you going to do? Make her eat the sushi?”
“Better than that.” Ryzaard starts walking to her. “I am going to make her like it.”
“How?”
“Easy. You concentrate on her eating the sushi and loving it. See it in your mind. Create it in your mind. According to Naganuma, you are especially good at that. I will do the same. You won’t have to say a thing. Just concentrate and watch.”
Jessica begins to stir in the chair next to him. He turns his head to the opposite end of the room to look at Alexa. She has her back to them and is fidgeting with her hair.
Matt closes his eyes and images Alexa craving raw fish. He sees her shoving great handfuls into her mouth, ravenous for more.
“Alexa,” Ryzaard says. “Are you hungry?”
She turns around. “No thanks, I had a snack before I came.”
“Eat too many protein bars and you will get nothing but gas.” Ryzaard raises an eyebrow. “Why don’t you have something fresh from the fridge over there? It should be well-stocked.”
Matt cracks his eyes open to sneak a look at Alexa and quickly shuts them. He goes back to the image in his mind of her devouring the sush
i.
“Maybe I will have something. I suddenly feel hungry.” She walks across the rug to the refrigerator a few steps from Matt’s chair. The door comes open. “This raw fish looks great.” She grabs the plate and sits down on the sofa. Without hesitation, she picks up a large pink piece of yellow tail, immerses it in soy sauce, and pops the whole thing in her mouth. “Delicious,” she says with her mouth full.
After one minute of listening to her eat, Ryzaard clears his throat. Matt opens his eyes to see Ryzaard draw a hand quickly across his throat.
It’s his signal for Matt to stop. The image of Alexa fades from his mind.
The next instant, a gagging noise comes from the sofa. Alexa drops the plate and its contents on the rug and runs from the room, holding her mouth.
A look of triumph flashes across Ryzaard’s face.
“Jing-wei,” he says.
Her image materializes on the wall screen. “Yes, Dr. Ryzaard.”
“Get the President of the United States on the line. I’d like to have a chat with him.”
CHAPTER 97
Please don’t let him die.
Kent pulls hard on the knob, and the door swings open on screaming hinges. Taking a step forward, he stops in the utter darkness of a long corridor and leans against a dusty wall to catch his breath. With no ventilation, the air has the taste of an old crypt. Seeing only by the light of the diode on his forehead and the IR goggles, he moves through murky green space, like an astronaut on some alien world. It’s all in sharp focus out to a distance of two or three meters, but beyond that, everything fades into an oblivion of mist. A rat the size of a cat runs through the corridor and bursts out of the haze to brush against his leg. He nearly falls back and hits the ground, catching his breath and thinking about the MEPP explosives in his backpack.
They’ll become very angry if there are any jarring movements.
If his calculations are correct, the chaos in the lobby is now consuming all available security personnel. It won’t last long. In time, a guard with a scanner will locate the source of the disturbance in the concrete outside the front door. And it will all be shut down.
