by Jacob Whaler
At last, Leo raises his head and thrusts his fist to the sky with the thumb up.
Kent sighs. “Thank God.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“I’m ready to reconsider now,” Kent says.
They see Leo reach into one of Matt’s hands and pull out a Stone. With his back to Ryzaard, he closes his eyes, lifts his hands up and brings them together.
Ryzaard slowly lifts his face off the grass and looks at Matt. His hand shoots out and grabs Matt’s ankle.
Before Kent can say anything, Matt and Ryzaard vanish, leaving Leo kneeling over empty grass.
CHAPTER 100
Elsa Bergman sits in front of a bluescreen fighting back a wave of panic as the entire trading protocol flatlines before her eyes.
She bursts through the glass door into the central conference room of the lab. Her screaming voice pierces the quiet.
“The Stones have disappeared! It’s taken down my whole financial program! Someone has to fix this now before we lose everything!”
Directly across the room from her, Diego Lopez spins around in his chair, jumps to his feet and runs to join her. Other members of the team slowly stand up from their chairs looking confused and walking through the doors to their seats around the conference room table.
Elsa races across the room to Diego. “I’ve lost contact with the Stones. The trading protocol is dead in the water. We’re running completely blind. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” Diego’s fingers dance around the jax in his hand. “Dr. Ryzaard isn’t responding.” He looks back at his office. “All three of his Stones vanished from my tracking algorithm just now, along with another Stone I was tracking.”
“We’re losing billions—did you hear me?—billions of IMUs every minute. If you don’t find the Stones right now—” She abruptly turns and marches back into her office, casting a steely look at everyone gathered around the table.
Diego drops into his seat, shaking his head.
Jing-wei calmly takes a seat next to him. “Where was Dr. Ryzaard at last contact?”
“In Thailand, at an old Buddhist temple outside of Lopburi. They were staging a raid with four attack choppers and forty soldiers. I was tracking a convergence of Stones. Three of Ryzaard’s, and three others, all in the same place.”
“Six Stones all together?” Jing-wei’s eyebrows lower over her brown eyes.
“And now there’s only two left. Four of them just disappeared.”
Alexa’s face comes up on the bluescreen next to the conference table. “What’s going on with Elsa?”
Elsa stands in her office, legs spread wide apart, gesticulating wildly with her arms. Her screaming voice is faintly audible through the soundproof glass.
“We’ve lost contact with Ryzaard’s Stones,” Jing-wei says. “All three of them. It shut down her trading program and threw her into a panic.”
Alexa yawns. “Glad I’m not there to deal with it. I suggest you sedate her before she hurts herself. Or one of you.” She sips from a champagne glass. “I’m sure Dr. Ryzaard is in command of the situation. There’s nothing to do but wait until he gets back.” She smiles and waves her fingers as her image slowly dissolves from the screen.
“I’m afraid she’s right,” Jing-wei says. “Now everyone get back to work.”
CHAPTER 101
Matt feels the cold floor with the palms of his hands. Each breath is like a dagger plunging into his lungs. When he opens his eyes, he’s staring up into a massive crystal chandelier, hundreds of teardrops suspended over his face, each reflecting a dazzling rainbow of colors.
He brings a hand up to his chest and runs his fingers through the tattered remains of his T-shirt. Underneath, four disc shapes of thin lead press against a silky smooth cloth just above his breast. Working a fingernail under one of them, he peels it off and brings it up in front of his eyes.
It worked, Dad.
A voice stirs beside him.
Pushing through the pain, Matt rolls over on to his stomach. His shoe bumps against something soft and pliable, like human flesh. He presses against it and the voice makes a sound again.
Instinctively, his foot recoils back.
Someone else is in the room.
He puts his hands underneath his body and tries more than once to push himself up. Each time, the pain in his chest is overwhelming and he slumps back down. He tries one last time and almost makes it up to his elbows, but then collapses, out of breath, twisting to the side.
His head bumps against wood.
Looking up, he sees the leg of a chair. He reaches for it and grabs the arm of the chair with his other hand, pulling himself up to his knees.
He turns to see Ryzaard lying on the floor, his hands on his head, lips moving.
Matt scans the room and recognizes the gold trim, the chandelier, the mirrors on every wall.
I’ve been here before.
Ryzaard’s world.
Breathing through piercing knives, Matt searches his mind for something to hold on to. It comes back in small snatches of memory, like random still photos from a long movie.
There was a plan. Matt would draw Ryzaard’s gunfire, protected by his dad’s Velkor shirt. Then Jake would throw a pulse grenade a few meters from Ryzaard, rendering him senseless, blind and deaf, at least for a time. His dad would scare away the last helicopter that lingered to protect Ryzaard. It would carry away the cube device that made the Stones useless.
With the power of the Stones restored, Leo would rush out and heal Matt.
Then Matt would kill Ryzaard.
That was the plan.
He can’t tell how much of the plan has been executed and how much has gone awry. But he’s certain of a few things. He hasn’t been healed. Ryzaard isn’t dead. And, worst of all, he’s in Ryzaard’s world.
No, there is something even worse.
Ryzaard has three Stones. I have only one.
Still fighting the shards of pain in his chest, he thrusts his hand in his pocket and finds his Stone. To have any chance of survival, to have any chance of ever seeing Jessica again, he has to jump away immediately.
Sitting down with his back against the chair, Matt tries to calm himself so that he can use his Stone. His eyelids drop down, and he starts to breath, seeing himself in his mind’s eye standing on the green grass next to his father at the old temple site in Thailand.
In spite of the pain, he feels the image solidify in his mind. Just a few more seconds.
“It’s not going to be that easy.”
Matt opens his eyes.
Ryzaard stares down. His face is covered with dirt except around his eyes, giving him the appearance of a large raccoon. A gash rips the skin on his forehead. His tweed jacket is a loose collection of burnt threads covered with dust. Blood trickles from his nose and ears. His smile reveals a missing tooth.
He looks like the Monkey has used him for a punching bag.
“Good try.” Ryzaard’s fist comes down on Matt’s jaw, and he slumps over the chair with Matt underneath him.
A warm salty taste spreads across Matt’s tongue. Pulling one leg up to his chest, he manages to get the sole of his shoe under Ryzaard. He holds his breath and pushes, using all the thigh strength he can scrape together.
Ryzaard’s body lifts up. He stumbles backward across the room and slams into a mirror. It shatters and pieces of glass rain to the floor around his body. Like a man in a drunken stupor, Ryzaard picks up a piece of glass in the shape of an eight inch blade and charges forward.
Feeling the adrenaline in his body push back the pain, Matt drops out of the chair, pivots and kicks Ryzaard as he moves by. The force of the blow sends Ryzaard over the chair and down the other side where he lands hard on his back. He tries to get up, but slumps down on the floor, struggling for breath.
Matt drops to his knees. A wave of pain floods into his chest and bathes the broken ribs under the Velkor shirt. He rolls over into a seating position, props his back up against
a wall and watches Ryzaard.
The old man is motionless on the floor except for his chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths.
Matt’s eyelids grow heavy and slide down. Leo isn’t here to heal him, so he has no choice but to heal himself. He fingers the Stone and grips it with white knuckles. Slowing his inhales and exhales, Matt focuses on the pain in his chest. It doesn’t take long to find it. It’s floating inside him, a chaotic mass of sound, color and movement. He descends into it, allowing it to settle around him like a churning sea of sensation. He studies it as one might study bacteria under a microscope.
Reaching out, he finds that it responds to his touch like clay in his hands. The random sounds and colors join into two solid spheres, following the movement of his hands, finding order and stability in a circular motion. When it feels right, he brings his hands together, palms touching. The spheres flow together until they converge into a single dot. It hangs like a drop of oil suspended in water, turns white, then fades away, leaving silence and calm in its wake.
Matt opens his eyes and inhales to the depths of his lungs with hands on his chest.
The pain is gone.
Ryzaard still lies on the floor five meters away. His breath is ragged and shallow.
Matt remembers something he brought with him.
He reaches inside the sock of his left leg, just above the ankle, and pulls out Ryzaard’s knife, the one he left behind as a marker when he took Jessica. It has the word Boker etched in small letters at the base of the blade. Wrapping his hand around the black handle, he stands to his feet and walks to the old man.
Now it’s my turn.
CHAPTER 102
It’s different this time.
When the next cycle of pure clarity rolls around, Little John pulls his legs in close to his chest, wraps his arms around them, and holds himself in this position against the raging pain. He starts counting. As he gets close to a hundred, he senses movement in his belly.
The worm starts sliding out of his throat.
Soon the tail of the worm wriggles past his tongue and out the front of his mouth until it waves back and forth in front of his face. The head of the worm is still in his belly, its teeth sunk deep into Little John’s spine.
In the stillness, the worm has relaxed its body and allowed its tail to emerge.
He has an idea.
Releasing the grip on his knees, his hand jumps out and grabs the end of the tail.
The worm goes stiff, its smooth scales morphing into hard plates. Tiny needles poke through the plates, piercing not only Little John’s hand, but his mouth and throat all way the down his esophagus and stomach.
He struggles to hold on to the tail, pulling it out several inches, then grabbing it with his other hand and ignoring the pain of ripping flesh that fills his chest. Pain is no longer an issue. He has become one with it.
Before he can pull the tail out any further, it morphs again into a slick, slimy surface. The needles withdraw. It slips from his hands and disappears back down his throat.
He hangs in space, arms and legs splayed out, wondering what Ryzaard is doing right now.
CHAPTER 103
I’ve never killed anyone before.
Matt approaches Ryzaard’s body on hands and knees as quietly as he can with the dagger poised in his hand. When he is less than a meter away, he raises the blade up, grips it tightly, and brings the point down onto Ryzaard’s chest.
Jessica, please forgive me.
Just before the point breaks through skin, Ryzaard vanishes. The knife blade glances off the marble floor and slides away from Matt.
“I’ve always wanted to do that.” Ryzaard’s voice comes from somewhere behind Matt.
Whipping around, Matt sees Ryzaard resting comfortably in a plush chair with red cushions on the far side of the room, one leg neatly folded over the other.
The ugly gash is gone from his forehead, as is the blood from his nose and ears. His face is flush with vigor and health.
“How did you—” Matt’s mouth drops open.
“Very kind of you to return my Boker.” Ryzaard reaches down and picks the dagger off the floor. “It has a certain sentimental value for me. My first kill.” Holding it up in front of his eyes, he twirls it around and watches the light reflect off the steel. “I must say, I am impressed with how you set me up. Brilliant tactics. But you made one fatal mistake.”
Matt stands, fingers clutching his Stone.
Ryzaard rises from the chair. “You see, I’ve always been of the opinion that you go into a fight with the odds overwhelmingly in your own favor. Until then, you hang back, building your strength, planning, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Then, if something goes wrong, you have a backup plan.” He unbuttons his tweed jacket, opens it up and slides two Stones from the leather harness on his chest, holding them together in front of him.
Matt steps back, using his breath to slow his racing pulse.
“This world is my backup plan.” Ryzaard moves closer, staring at Matt. “Do you have a backup plan?” His arms drop down. Two rods of white energy shoot out of the Stones.
Stumbling backward, Matt slams into a wall. A much thinner line bursts out of his Stone. He brings it up to block Ryzaard’s blows.
An explosion of fire and smoke lights up to the right and left. The marble floor trembles beneath Matt’s feet. A chilling darkness descends upon him.
As Matt watches in disbelief, the building peels away on either side of him, falling into a churning mass of twisted metal and glass, coming to rest in giant heaps on the street far below.
Only a narrow strip of the building remains. The rest has been cut away to expose a hundred floors of open rooms like a honeycomb ripped in two. Matt and Ryzaard stand at opposite ends of that strip in the night air, less than five meters apart.
No stars are visible through the overcast sky. A floating mist coats everything, including Matt’s face, with a thin, greasy film. The acrid smell of burnt sulfur rises up from smoking piles of debris on the street.
Matt looks out at a city that rivals the size of Manhattan, an elegant collection of glass and steel in the form of cones, pyramids, cubes and spheres lit from within, all arranged on an orderly grid of streets that fans out like the rays of the sun from the central point upon which they stand.
Geometric perfection.
“I’ve made some improvements since the last time you were here.” Ryzaard casts his glance around the city.
His mind racing, Matt tries to think of a way to defend himself. The image of Ryzaard pumping bullets into the defenseless Monkey back at the old temple site jumps into his mind. He sees himself lying on a pile of wreckage, Ryzaard standing over him and thrusting the dagger into his heart.
He silences the thought with a deep breath in and out.
“Did you ever play baseball?” Ryzaard moves closer. “When I was a child, there was a park across the road from my home in Poland. The neighborhood kids gathered there after school. I was one of the star hitters.”
Ryzaard’s fists wrap around his Stones. He brings them together and winds up like a professional baseball player ready to launch a ball out of the park. Bright lines shoot out from his Stones, weaving themselves together in a tight spiral tube extending twenty meters into the darkness. Moving his arms horizontally, he swings the massive bat at Matt’s midsection.
Just before contact, Matt drops to the marble floor, and the tube of light passes above his head, its low hum clearly audible. It draws his hair up, and sparks shower down as the lines of energy sever the strands.
Ryzaard looks disappointed with the result. He points the massive tube of energy above him with both hands. Its spiral weave melts together into one flat blade.
Matt’s eyes are drawn upward. He understands what Ryzaard is going to do.
Lunging forward, Ryzaard clenches his jaw. Deep ridges appear over his eyes. He grips his Stones with white knuckles and brings the blade down.
The acrid s
mell of ozone rains down from the pulsating plasma.
Dropping to his knees, Matt thrusts his Stone up with both hands. His eyelids clamp shut. An image passes through his mind. It’s Jessica standing on her porch, the palms of her hands resting on his shirt above his heart, looking up, eyes glistening with moisture.
“It’s time,” she says. Her lips press against his.
For you, Jessica.
A single sphere of blue light jumps out of Matt’s Stone. Then it breaks into a cascading shower of lines descending to the floor all around him like the bars of a birdcage.
Ryzaard’s blade crashes down and makes contact with the blue energy above Matt’s head.
And then the blade stops.
There are no sparks or massive explosions. No shards of broken glass or steel. No flashes of energy or bursts of plasma rays.
The blade simply stops above Matt’s head, as surely as a fly stops when it meets a windshield on the freeway.
Ryzaard roars with anger and pulls back the great energy beam, bringing it down again and again on the blue lines that now encase Matt. Always with the same result.
Finally, in a fit of frustration, Ryzaard swings the beam in an arc that circles below Matt’s body, slicing away the floor on which he kneels.
For an instant, nothing moves. Then the entire marble slab beneath him falls away into the darkness below, taking him with it.
CHAPTER 104
Kneeling on the grass, Leo’s gaze is fixed on the empty spot where Matt lay on his back only seconds earlier.
Kent rushes to the boy’s side and drops down. “Where did he go?”
Leo stares in silence at the grass. “I was too late. I should have gotten here sooner, should have pulled him away from Ryzaard.”
“You did exactly what he asked you to do.” Kent puts his arm around the boy and feels the trembling in his body.
“No. I failed Matt. Ryzaard will kill him.”
Kent slips his hands behind Leo’s head and turns it so they are looking eye to eye. “You haven’t failed anyone. We can still help Matt. Do you have any idea where Ryzaard took him?”
