by Jacob Whaler
“Close them all and cut your losses.”
“But Dr. Ryzaard, that’s going to cost us over—”
“Do it!” He jumps up from his desk and runs across the floor to the room next door. His palm slams against the door until it slides open.
Dr. Zemikis is hovering over the two children and looking back and forth from their faces to the bluescreens hanging on the walls above their heads.
“What’s going on?” Ryzaard rushes to the foot of the bed where the small girl is shackled to the railings.
“I don’t understand.” Dr. Zemikis peers at the bluescreens, shaking his head. “The connection to the implants on the two children has been lost. The implants are no longer functional.”
“How can that be?”
Dr. Zemikis runs to one of the screens. His fingertips tap and sweep its surface. His body freezes as graphs and columns of numbers flow over its surface. He stares at it, squinting and shaking his head.
“Impossible.”
“What’s impossible?” Ryzaard’s voice fills the room. His words come out slowly and forcefully. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Dr. Zemikis turns to face him. “The medulla connection for each of the implants has been severed. From within.”
“How can that be?” Looking down into the face of the girl, Ryzaard sees her eyes flutter for an instant and then shoot open. The pupils close to tiny points. Her implant is dark. “They’re waking up,” he says.
Beside the girl, the boy’s eyes shoot open. His fingers curl into a fist.
Little John lies still, his eyes closed, the implant glowing light green. Veins of blue pulse through it like something alive.
A red square starts flashing on the bluescreens behind each of the children.
Dr. Zemikis yells out to his assistant. “Terminate adrenaline injections!”
The assistant jumps toward the screens, fingers outstretched. A brief sound, like high pressure air escaping from a valve, is audible in the room. It comes from the bedside of each of the victims.
“Sorry,” the assistant says. “Too late.”
Seconds later, Little John and the children open their mouths as if on cue and inhale deeply. Their chests rise in the air and spines arch against restraining bands drawn across their bodies. Necks long, their heads are thrown back. Metal shackles rattle with the violent movement of their arms and legs. The incessant beeping of accelerated heartbeats floats in the chaos of the room.
Ryzaard takes a thin gold card out of his pocket and touches it with the tip of his index finger. His eyes drop down to the silver cube on the floor two meters from his feet. Its low humming picks up in volume. Green telltales on its sides glow.
He lifts a jax to his mouth. “Elsa, the bodies of the children seem to have rejected the implant. Until we get this all sorted out, I am increasing power on the Null Box. Both of them are awake and lucid with theoretical access to their Stones. I cannot risk any funny business. I will still have limited access to my Stones. You will have to terminate the trading protocol. At least for now. We will get this sorted out and get back online.”
“Understood.” The strain in Elsa’s voice is palpable. “We just lost a hundred billion IMUs, enough to buy a few small countries.”
“Don’t worry,” Ryzaard says. “We’ll make it up later.”
Elsa shakes her head. “It takes time to build up our investment positions. It can’t be done overnight. These losses are real.”
“Think of it as good time to take a rest so we don’t attract unwanted attention from the System.”
“That’s not an issue.” Elsa throws up her hands. “The whole System has been bought off. We are the System!”
A burst of anger hits Ryzaard. “This conversation is over.” He twists and throws the jax against the wall where it disintegrates into sparks and shattered glass.
Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Ryzaard looks down at the boy on the right and the girl on the left. They are staring directly at him, their eyes tracking his movements.
“Dr. Zemikis, may I suggest you get these two under heavy sedation? It’s dangerous when they are awake.”
Dr. Zemikis shakes his head. “Unless you want to kill them now, we’ll have to wait until the adrenaline wears off.”
“How long?”
“Three minutes.”
Ryzaard fumbles for his jax and realizes he no longer has it. He faces the nearest bluescreen. “Alexa, I want ten combat personnel up here immediately. Pulse rifles and flash grenades.”
Dr. Zemikis looks up, utter surprise registering on his face, his white coat drenched in sweat down the back and around the armpits.
“They’ll be there in five minutes,” Alexa says.
Ryzaard shakes his head.
“Make it two.”
CHAPTER 143
Little John keeps one hand on the Stone. The other is on the tooth-dagger, still sticking through the worm tail between his teeth. As he falls backward into a warm sea of colors, a thin blue film of light clings to his body and the worm.
His mind drifts to the two children. They are probably back in Ryzaard’s lab of horrors, chained to their beds, perhaps unable to use the Stones to escape. It won’t take long for Ryzaard to learn of the problem with the implants. They’ll be subjected to new implants of Abomination and more unspeakable suffering to fulfill the evil man’s need for complete control.
Unless, that is, Little John’s hunch turns out to be right. There isn’t much time to find out.
The intense pain of the worm in his belly fades to an ever present throb and nausea.
Opening his mind to the colors, he reaches out to them, like a rock climber on a high cliff face, looking for meaning or structure, anything that he can grasp and hold on to. Spheres and organic shapes float by, connected by tubes of light. Gently and carefully, he searches for patterns in the chaos. A map of the network. Something intelligible.
A mental picture begins to emerge in his mind. At first it’s a simple black dot on a white background. As he concentrates, it changes to a three dimensional sphere. He’s no longer sure if he is seeing it only in his mind, or if he’s watching it outside his body.
It’s all running together.
Then the black sphere explodes into a spider-like creature, with an enormous head, small torso and impossibly long arms and legs, jagged and bent. It dwarfs him in size. Its outer skin is covered in dry scales, almost reptilian. Bony ridges protrude from above the uneven eyes. Its jaws open and close, as if trying to speak, and canine fangs appear behind sagging lips.
As he stares at it, its body becomes a churning mass of teeth, eyes and horns, changing to almost human form, then collapsing into a lizard creature with a long tail and short legs, then back to the spider shape.
Its eyelids open. Little John moves to the right, and the eyes follow, dropping down to stare at the Stone in his hand. The lizard creature starts moving toward him.
You have the power.
He tries to pull back, to shut it out of his mind, but it comes closer, morphing into a man with glowing skin and a white robe. A gentle smile appears on his face.
He holds out a golden hand.
Give us the power.
Instincts take over. Little John’s right hand lifts above his head. A long curving blade like a pirate’s sword bursts out of the tip of the Stone, and he brings it down upon the man where the thick neck connects with the shoulders, cutting diagonally through the chest.
For an instant, the man changes into a mass of mouths, some wolf-like, some insect-like, but most just a jumbled collection of scattered teeth behind bleeding lips, all gaping open and screaming the same words.
We want the power.
Little John swings the blade again, this time slicing through the center of the mass. It falls silent and disintegrates into bits of black debris, fading from view.
He falls deeper into the interior of the planet. The random nature of the colors changes. Pattern and structure appear
where once there was only chaos.
In the distance below, he sees the outline of a large transparent sphere. It’s the most distinctive shape in sight, and he bends his line of descent toward it to investigate. As he nears, inner and outer rings appear, one inside the sphere, the other outside it, connected by long beams like the spokes of a wheel. He positions himself directly above the outer ring as it rushes up to meet him.
The moment the soles of his feet make contact with the surface of the ring, flowing chords of sound explode around him, chaotic, random, meaningless. He claps the palms of his hands over his ears, but it makes no difference. It’s coming from inside his head.
He stumbles and falls onto his back, staring up.
Focusing his awareness on the sounds, small patterns emerge from the chaos. The chirping of birds and waves on a beach. The taste of his mother’s homemade spaghetti sauce. A light breeze blows across his face. Warm hands knead sore muscles, a memory of a full body massage from forty years ago. He’s immersed in a river of warm blue water. Pleasant sensations cascade over him, masking the dull throb of the worm in his belly.
A flood of memories.
Standing up on the outer ring, he walks a hundred meters across the beam to the inner ring. It encloses a dark crystal as large as a small house. When he reaches out to it, its surface is soft to the touch.
The sensory flow over his body and through his mind stops, replaced by silence and stillness. The crystal morphs into a perfect sphere that goes through the full spectrum of colors from black to white.
With the palm of his hand on the sphere, strings of numbers begin to pour through his consciousness.
And he knows he’s right.
The entire planet is a massive computer. Now all he has to do is find a way to connect.
Little John’s mind wanders back to a conversation with Leo, the boy with the gift for healing. When Little John asked him where he learned about human anatomy, his reply had been surprising.
“Human anatomy? What’s that?”
“How do you heal?” Little John had asked.
“I look for patterns,” Leo had said. “When I see something that doesn’t look right, then I make it right. I make it fit the pattern.”
The boy knew nothing about science or anatomy, but could heal quickly and efficiently. He didn’t look at atoms or molecules or even individual organs. The Stone gave him the ability to take in massive amounts of data, organize it into patterns and manipulate it. For him, it was child’s play.
The realization hits Little John.
To make sense of this planetary computer network, he’ll have to become as a little child.
Look for patterns.
With one hand gripping the Stone and the palm of the other pressed against the soft surface of the white sphere, he focuses his mind, not on the numbers, but the flow of the numbers. He doesn’t bother trying to make sense of it, analyzing it or capturing meaning from it.
He simply lets it flow through him.
A hole the size of his fist opens up in the sphere.
At the same instant, the sharp pain in his lower back fades away. The worm’s outer skin turns to slippery rubber on his tongue, and its whole body silently slides out of his mouth. He takes his hand off the sphere and holds the worm up by the tooth-dagger, still piercing its body near the tip of the tail. Its head swims into the hole in the sphere.
The connection.
The worm passes into the sphere. Its body follows until the tooth-dagger catches cross-wise against the sides of the hole, holding the worm in place. As he stares into the transparent sphere, Little John sees the worm open its jaws and stretch its body out until its head disappears into the center.
His intuition tells him what to do next. He wraps his fingers around the worm’s tail.
And gets in.
The numbers in his mind blur into a 3D view of a wide river running deep blue through white space. It branches off into ever smaller rivers, like a network of arteries dividing and multiplying until all that’s left is a fine mesh of capillaries. The number of colored rivers explodes until the whole white space is a collection of interconnecting currents that mix, separate and mix again.
Within the river, travel is instantaneous. He follows the flow, upstream and downstream, back and forth, from one end to the other in nanoseconds, through a web of incomprehensible complexity.
But he comprehends it.
Three seconds later, he’s spent the equivalent of millennia exploring the entire network. He knows every nook and cranny.
And he finds Ryzaard.
CHAPTER 144
“What’s your plan to save the kids?” Jessica looks up at Matt.
“Plan? Who said anything about a plan?”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“We don’t need a plan. I didn’t have one when I went after you.”
“But we’re going up against Ryzaard this time, not a couple of security guards.”
“OK, how’s this for a plan?” Matt says. “We’ll drop into the circular room by the door. If we see the children, we’ll make our way to them, hold hands and jump everyone out together. Pretty simple.”
“You mean pretty stupid.”
“Stupid?”
Jessica shakes her head. “Do you really think Ryzaard is just going to have the children there, sitting on a sofa eating ice cream and playing checkers?”
“No idea.”
“Both of the kids have Stones, right?”
“Right.”
“And they know how to use them to jump away, right?”
“Leo does.” Matt is getting anxious to leave. “I don’t know about Yarah. She’s never made a jump on her own before, but she’s incredibly smart. Has an intuitive feel for the Stones. I think she can do it.”
“Ryzaard is smart, too. So, at a minimum, he’s made it so they can’t make any jumps.”
Matt nods. “Which means he’s either got them drugged or tied down sitting next to one of those silver cubes.”
“Or both,” Jessica says.
“Right. So the second we get there, you look for a silver cube and take it out with the pulse rifle.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be your human shield.” Matt lifts up his shirt and presses his thumb against the sternum. Blue skin spreads out on his belly and crawls over his body, up past the chest to his neck and down the thighs to the soles of his feet. “My job is to protect you and jump everyone away. Whatever happens, stay behind me and keep a hand on me.”
“Good. Sounds like we have a plan.”
“I just need one more thing.” Matt drops his hands onto Jessica’s shoulders, bends down and kisses her. When he stops and pulls away, she reaches up and pulls him down hard for another long kiss.
“No matter what happens, I love you, Matt.”
“Nothing’s going to happen.” Matt grips his Stone. “Hold on.”
CHAPTER 145
“Two minutes are up, Alexa.” Ryzaard stares at her face on the bluescreen. “Where are my combat troops?”
“In the elevator now, making their way to you.”
Ryzaard walks between the beds where the boy and the girl look up at him, straining against the shackles on their wrists and ankles. He turns to Dr. Zemikis. “Time to put these two back to sleep. Please do the injections now.”
“Just one more minute.” Zemikis holds two thin tubes tipped with needles and filled with yellow liquid. “It’s important that we don’t overload their systems.”
“I’ll take that chance.” Ryzaard walks to Zemikis, grabs the yellow tubes from his hands and turns back to the children.
“Please, wait.” Zemikis follows behind. “It might kill them if you—” He freezes and stares at the far end of the room by the door, his eyes opening wide.
Ryzaard looks into Zemikis’ eyes and sees the reflection of two people standing near the door. Gently placing the yellow tubes on one of the beds, he slips two Stones from his leather
harness and swings around to let fly a straight line of brilliant purple energy directly at Matt and Jessica.
A sky blue aura of light jumps around both of them, but a part of the energy beam bursts through, slamming into Matt’s chest, throwing him backward into Jessica. They both hit the wall and fall to the floor. Jessica’s hand slips off Matt’s back.
Ryzaard grabs two more Stones from the leather harness. With two in each hand, a massive blast of purple plasma jumps out of the Stones. At the same instant, Matt lunges for Jessica, spreading his arms and legs, and makes himself as large a target as possible. The moment their fingertips make contact, the blue aura envelopes them both. The energy blast hits squarely in front of Matt. Part of it bleeds through the blue aura again and buries itself in his blue skin, throwing him backward. The rest flows around and beyond them, deflected by the aura.
A section of wall behind Matt and Jessica vaporizes, sucking them out of the room into the open air 175 stories above the street.
Ryzaard staggers to the opening in the wall and stares down.
“Fifteen seconds,” he mutters.
CHAPTER 146
Jessica falls into the emptiness of the night sky.
“Matt!”
There’s no response.
As she flails her arms in the darkness, the lights of the MX Global building rush by just a few feet away. Something brushes her hand. She grasps it and feels Matt’s ankle. His skin is sticky and moist, and she pulls herself hand over hand up his leg and torso until she’s face to face with him.
His eyes are closed and flecks of foam bleed from his open mouth.
Jessica holds him close. Her fingers slide down his right arm to his hand, still gripping the Stone. She wraps them around his hand and closes her eyes. And waits.
When she opens her eyes, there’s a bright moon in a narrow strip of night sky above her.
She sits up. She and Matt are lying in a shallow crater in the sidewalk at the base of the MX Global building. No one else is in sight on the quiet street. The aura of blue light still clings to her and Matt.
