by Jacob Whaler
Ryzaard walks back to the window, hands clasped behind him. “Good work. It is him. No doubt.”
“That’s what I thought you would say.” Alexa grins. “Now if we only knew where he jumped to. And what that little black book was for.”
“Were any other data samples taken in this exact area at the same time?” Ryzaard strokes his neatly trimmed goatee. “Latent energy fields, infrared, background radiation, anything?”
“We have data sniffers set up around the perimeter of the shrine grounds. It’s standard procedure to take hi-def samples of the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Shall I send what we have to our resident science freak for analysis?”
“Yes, and tell Jerek I’ll stop by later for a chat about it.” Ryzaard turns from the window and drops down in the high back chair. His feet go up on the desk.
Alexa starts to leave, and then stops and turns. “Is that everything?”
“Just one more item.” Ryzaard motions to the room next door. “Has Dr. Small been briefed on the nature of our experiment on the patient?”
Alexa looks behind her at the door to the other room. “He has. And he says he’s excited to get started.”
CHAPTER 19
It’s been five days. Jessica knows because each evening she uses a sushi knife to carve a jagged gash on the wall next to the window facing the beach. She looks at the four lines and carves another one, deeper than the rest. Time passes excruciatingly slow. She’s tried long swims out to sea, morning walks through the jungle munching on peanut butter bananas. She’s even tried to enjoy the abundant chocolate oranges.
Nothing works.
She doesn’t know if Matt’s dead or alive. If he’s dead, she may be stuck on this planet to the end of her days. If he’s alive, he might have run into trouble to take so long.
Either way, she has an unsettled feeling. Something isn’t right.
Rather than sleep in the house all alone, she sets up camp down on the beach, the last place she saw Matt alive, dragging chairs and futons onto the sand and building a lean-to shelter out of drapes cut from the large picture window in the dining room. She discovers the house is made of excellent firewood. The front steps and deck are gone, and there are holes ripped in the walls, victims of the massive bonfires she lights every night at sundown.
Matt can fix it all when he gets back. If he gets back.
At dawn on the sixth day, the seagulls wake her up. She starts a fire and throws one of the sliding doors from the bedroom onto the flames. With a thin blanket pulled over her shoulders, she sits on the sand with her back propped up against the low table from the house and looks to the south, the direction Matt disappeared on the motorcycle. His tracks have long faded in the surf and wind. She follows the line of the beach for miles as it curves away.
It’s no use eating breakfast. She isn’t hungry.
“Hey, what’s up?”
She whips around and looks at two familiar legs standing ankle deep in the sand. A long line of footprints trails off behind him to the north.
Jessica jumps up and looks Matt in the eye, hands on her hips. Feelings shift like tectonic plates, releasing an eruption of rage to the surface.
Maybe he expects a hero’s welcome with hugs and kisses.
What he gets is a carefully placed left hook to his jaw that sends him sprawling backward onto the sand.
“Hey, why so happy to see me?” he says.
Jessica storms forward and glares down at him. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been?”
“A couple of hours?”
She rolls her eyes and makes a fist with her right hand. “Try six long days.”
“What?”
“I’ve nearly gone crazy with worry, wondering if you would ever come back and if I would ever get out of here.”
“Jess.” Matt stands up and engulfs her in his arms before she can hit him again. Her body is stiff and hard. “I’m sorry. There’s must be a time differential between here and Earth. It really was only a couple of hours for me.” He feels the tremors running through her body. “I won’t leave you again. I promise.”
She relaxes, and a wave of softness moves through her body. Her arms find their way around his waist. “All right. I’m holding you to that promise.” Her face presses into his chest.
Leaning down, Matt drops his lips to the top of her head and inhales the smell of ocean and sand and jungle. He speaks through her hair, just loud enough for her to hear. “I got the book. We need to leave soon. As soon as we figure out where to go. Ryzaard is alive.”
“How do you know?”
“I felt it. Like another presence in a room.”
“What are we going to do?” Her face turns up to his.
“Do what Naganuma said. Gather the Stones. And find my dad.” His lips drop down and press against hers, holding them there for a long time as the raw fear and panic slowly drain away.
As he thinks about all the good times he’s had with Jessica in this perfect world, Matt wonders if they’ll ever be happy again once they go back to Earth. Putting all thoughts of Ryzaard out of his mind, he forces a smile and resolves to enjoy the last few hours before they leave.
“I’m suddenly hungry.” Jessica releases her grip. “You?”
“Famished.”
“Then let’s have a good feed before we take a couple last runs on the mountain. Any chance you could come up with some more gyoza and miso soup?”
Matt snaps his fingers. “I think it’s already waiting for us.” They walk up the beach to the house. Matt gives Jessica a boost up to the level of the front door.
She looks back at him. “Sorry about the stairs and the deck. There may be a few missing walls and doors inside. They all made great firewood.”
“No problem.” Matt smiles and hops up on to the main level. “I can whip up some new ones.” His hand brushes against the little book in his side pocket, prompting a twinge of fear.
Naganuma. Ryzaard. Dad.
He pushes the fear away. There will be time to study the book later.
A couple more hours of happiness won’t hurt.
CHAPTER 20
Ryzaard finds a chair in Jerek’s office and sits down. Both of them look at the large bluescreen on his desk.
“Interesting idea,” Jerek says. “Let me make sure I understand this.” He adjusts his back into the chair. “When a Holder makes a jump with a Stone, it leaves a unique energy signature in the surrounding area that lasts a second or two, like an afterimage. Another Holder can feel the pull of that signature and follow the jump, going to the same place and time as the first. Is that right?”
“Correct,” Ryzaard says. “The Stones have a natural affinity for each other. They like to be together. One naturally pulls the other along. Like the way one sled follows in the tracks of another through deep snow.”
Jerek plays his fingers across the bluescreen in front of him. Multi-colored graphs, 3D plot scans, bar charts, maps and spread sheets jump onto the screen. “This is the entire data sample extracted from the coordinates at Naganuma’s shrine in Japan as provided by Alexa. It’s a complete capture of all electromagnetic spectrum picked up by the sensors at that exact place and time.”
Ryzaard nods his head. “The question is whether it captured enough for my Stones to lock on to the signature and follow the jump. Now that I have two Stones, they are more sensitive. It might just work.”
“With the right equipment and instruments, I think I can take the data stream and recreate it here in the lab.” Jerek leans back in his chair and looks at Ryzaard.
“How long will it take?”
“A couple of weeks at least,” Jerek says. “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. Maybe three.”
Ryzaard stands up and turns to leave the room. “I’ll give you one. Day, that is. Put this at the top of your list.”
“Along with everything else that’s at the top of my list?”
“Right,” Ryzaard says. “Along with everything else.” He walks o
ut of the lab and back down the long corridor to his office.
CHAPTER 21
“He kidnapped my son.” Kent lets the words hang in the air as he works it all out in his mind. “He kidnapped Little John and killed at least three dozen people in the process. All for the Stones.”
Jake nods. “He must have nearly unlimited resources to blow up those four Black Harpies.”
They’ve been walking west with the sun to their backs the whole morning. Temperatures have risen to the point where Kent feels his shirt sticking to his skin.
“Ryzaard will be looking for my son.”
“No doubt.”
“He must have a way to track the Stones.”
“For sure.”
A squadron of US military attack choppers shoots by overhead, following the line of the highway. Without thinking, Kent drops to the road, arms over his head, face to the pavement, heart pounding. The vibrations resonate in his chest. Panic presses in, making it hard to breathe.
He looks to the side and sees Jake on the ground, shaking.
“Just a scare.” Kent looks up and breathes in the aroma of the cornfields, letting it settle inside and quell the fear. “So, Jake. You have a plan to find my son. What’s the first step?”
“Get to a freedom camp, like I said.”
“How do we find one of those?”
“Don’t worry,” Jake says. “It’ll find us.” He opens the palm of his hand and shows Kent a clunky disk-shaped device. “A few of us have these, although we don’t flash them around.”
Kent stands up and grins. “Abomination?”
“A necessary evil.” Jake moves his head around, looking from side to side. Another dark blue helicopter streaks by overhead, and he follows it with his sunglasses. “All those trucks that supply the freedom camps don’t just randomly show up. We have a communication network.”
“Doesn’t sound secure to me,” Kent says. “Aren’t you worried about data trackers listening in?”
Jake lets a grin bend his lips. “Of course it’s not secure. That’s the point. Secure networks attract hackers. So we use old technology that’s all but forgotten. Short-wave radio. Morse Code. Let’s go.”
A fist-sized rock lies on the pavement ten feet ahead on the line Jake is walking. As Jake closes in on the rock, he swings his foot and kicks it out of the way like a soccer ball.
Kent shoots a glance at Jake. “How do you do that with no eyes?”
Jake laughs. “Some say I have a gift. Little John says I can see better than anyone he knows.” The transceiver crackles in his hand. “Blind Man, this is Tree Frog. You out there? Over.”
Jake puts the round disk up to his mouth. “This is Blind Man. I read you, Tree Frog. We’re walking your way. Over.”
The voice in the disk laughs. “I’m in a yellow school bus full of Children fresh from the city. You really got the Spider with you? Over.”
“Right next to me, in the flesh. Over.”
“Good,” says the voice. “I’ll keep an eye out for you. Keep walking. Shouldn’t be long.”
Jake slips the disk back into a pocket.
“The Spider?” Kent says.
Jake laughs. “You’re already famous.”
CHAPTER 22
Matt lays his chopsticks down and sits on the tatami floor with his back against the wall. The remains of the gyoza, miso soup and rice are still spread out on the low table. With no idea when they’ll have their next meal, he’s eaten way past the point of being full.
“I’m stuffed,” he says.
Jessica has already finished her meal and is gazing straight ahead out the large window to the west. “The sunset is beautiful again,” she says. “I couldn’t stand to look at it while you were gone. Now I could sit here and watch it all night. I’m not sure I want to leave this place.”
Matt doesn’t move and disturb the moment. But the book in his pocket keeps pressing against his mind. He takes it out and lays it on the table next to his chopsticks.
“This is what Naganuma wanted me to find,” he says.
Jessica picks it up and fans the worn pages. “It’s all written in Japanese. Looks like some kind of list. Or maybe a ledger.”
“Exactly.” Matt gently takes the book back. “It’s a list of the Stones and their Holders.” He browses through the pages. “Organized, Stone by Stone, with a sort of pedigree chart for each one. It’s incredible. I mean, look at this. For some of the Stones, it goes back hundreds of years. For others, it only has the most recent Holder.” He spreads the pages of the book on the table so that Jessica can see it.
She leans forward and looks down. “How many Stones are there in all?”
Matt flips through the pages, looking quickly at each one. “It looks like there are ten.” Then he checks on the back of the last page. “No, eleven. Naganuma discovered another Stone just a few months ago. He’s got the date right here.” Matt points to some words on the page.
“Where?”
“Rio de Janeiro.”
“So maybe there are more out there that just the eleven?”
“Could be,” Matt says. “It looks like Naganuma didn’t know about the last Stone until recently.” He goes back a few pages in the book. “Interesting. Look at the entry for my Stone.”
Jessica narrows her eyes. “I would, but it’s all written in Japanese.”
“Right. It’s written in katakana, the Japanese alphabet for foreign words. It says that the previous Holder was an Aztec woman.” Matt takes time to sound out a word. “Her name was Chicomecoatl. Something like that.” His eyes go up to Jessica. “How did an Aztec woman make it all the way north to Colorado?”
Jessica’s head bobs up and down. “Some legends say the Aztecs originally lived in the Rocky Mountains and moved south to build Mexico City. Maybe there’s some truth to the legends.” She picks up her chopsticks and reaches for another gyoza. “But the real question is, how did Naganuma find out about the Stones and their Holders?”
“No idea.” Matt sips the last of his miso soup and savors the flavor. “But I do know what we have to do.”
Jessica lays down her chopsticks and slowly raises her eyes.
Matt senses the fear in her face.
“What do we have to do, Matt?”
“Gather the Stones and their Holders,” Matt says. “Before Ryzaard gets them. Do whatever we can to stop him from making his vision of the world a reality.”
“It’s going to be a war between you and him, isn’t it?”
Matt hangs onto the silence, not wanting to answer. But the truth hits him, almost taking his breath away.
“Yes.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
CHAPTER 23
When Ryzaard walks into the circular room next to his office, the first thing he notices is how spotless it has become. The sofas, tables and refrigerator are gone. So is all the blood. It looks like a cross between a hospital room and a hi-tech bio lab.
A thin man in a lab coat with unusually long legs and arms towers over a hospital bed, looking down with intense concentration. Ryzaard thinks of a black widow brooding over its prey.
The little fat man is lying on the bed, eyes closed, covered up to his neck with a pristine white sheet, leaving his bald head with its white fringe exposed. His belly is an enormous bulge. Thick restraining straps cross his body at the chest, waist, thighs and ankles. An I-V pack hangs to the side.
“Dr. Small,” Ryzaard says. “I understand you have been briefed on the nature of our little project.”
Dr. Small glances up. “Mikal Ryzaard, President and CEO of MX SciFin. Good to make your acquaintance.” He returns his gaze to the patient on the bed. “Do you know his name?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Ryzaard moves to the other side of the bed and stares down. “No identification of any kind was found on him. We have searched, but failed to find any biometric scan matches on the Mesh. Exceedingly rare for these times. It appears that this man has lived off-grid for some t
ime.”
“Interesting,” Dr. Small says. “I’ve completed my initial physical examination. He’s healthy for his age. The heart, liver and lungs are all in pristine condition despite the fact that he’s seriously overweight and fond of beer.” Dr. Small leans down and gently lifts one of the man’s eyelids while shining a light. No reaction. “The Propozol is doing its job for now. But we’ll have to bring him out of the coma in a day or two. To avoid any further brain damage.”
Ryzaard looks directly at Dr. Small. “Enough time to complete the implant procedure and start the experiment, I hope.”
“Yes, I believe so,” Dr. Small says. “Under different circumstances, I would have my doubts.” He waves an arm at the equipment in the room behind him. “But your assistants have provided me with everything I’ve asked for. I am confident the procedure will be quite successful.”
“Your research on neural implants is impressive, and your proposals for human trials are not only reasonable, but compelling. Too bad the FDA shut you down.” Ryzaard walks to a desk near the wall and stares down at a glass sphere encasing a black box. “Perhaps now you will have the opportunity you have been looking for.” He touches a green dot on the glass sphere.
The top of the black box slowly opens and white vapor pours out of its interior and down its sides. As the vapor clears, Ryzaard sees a claw-shaped green jewel suspended in the liquid nitrogen solution.
Dr. Small walks to the side of Ryzaard and surveys the jewel, barely the size of a fingernail. “A thing of great beauty,” he says. “I’ve studied the external schematics. The bio interface is revolutionary. Its designers display an astonishing grasp of human brain function.” The doctor reaches out to touch the side of the glass sphere. “I only regret that I had no opportunity to open the device and inspect its internal structure.”
Ryzaard touches the green dot again. The lid floats shut on the black box. “My apologies, Dr. Small. Because of the rushed nature of this project, no patents have been filed, and the device and its design remain a trade secret that must be vigorously protected. I am sure you understand.”
