by Jacob Whaler
“Unfortunately, a perfect specimen of the decay of modern society.” Ryzaard arches his back and rolls his neck from side to side. “Even with cosmic power in the palm of his hand, he’s got zero ambition. Any idea where he got the Stone? Naganuma’s little leather book is a bit unclear on that point.”
Alexa’s fingertips massage Ryzaard’s scalp. “He’s a distant descendant of Joseph Stalin. We think the Stone came through that line.”
“Makes sense.” Ryzaard stands up from his chair and stretches again. “Stalin would turn over in his grave if he saw what had become of his Stone.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a fan of his.”
“A fan? Not really.” Ryzaard picks the jax off his desk and drops it into his pocket. “He started out with the right ideas. But with only one Stone and no way to get more, not to mention his limited intelligence, there was only so much he could do.”
Alexa stands back and stretches. “So, have you decided?” She walks to Ryzaard’s desk and pours herself a tall glass of champagne.
Ryzaard nods. “Within a few hours, there’ll be one less parasitic bastard in the world and one more Stone on my chest.”
CHAPTER 17
“How can we talk to her?” Leo nudges eggs and bacon in a frying pan over an open fire. Dew glistens on the grass in the cool morning air.
Yarah sits on the log beside him. “My fairy godmother?”
“Yeah. You said last night that she could help me.”
A bluebird swoops and lands on Yarah’s finger. She brings the bird close to her face.
“All I have to do is call her, and she’ll come.”
“What’s she like?” Leo pulls the frying pan off the fire and reaches for a plate.
“She’s beautiful and nice and wears a wonderful dress.”
Leo hands a plate to Yarah. “Does she have a Stone?”
“Lots of them.” Yarah picks a slice of bacon up with dirty fingers, throws her head back and drops it into her mouth. Her eyes close and her mouth moves into a smile as she slowly chews.
“Are you sure she’s good?” Leo puts the frying pan back over the fire. He likes his yolks to be firm, not runny like Yarah. “Have you seen inside her mind?”
Yarah swallows and cocks her head to the side. “She’s not like other people.”
“What do you mean?”
“Going inside her mind is like walking through a long hallway with lots of doors. Most of them are locked. When I look inside the open ones, all I see are good things. All the people she’s helped. All the people that love her.”
Leo tests the yolks with the tip of a fork. “I wonder what she’s hiding?”
“She said she has to keep secrets for all the people she helps. That’s why she can’t let me see everything.”
Leo slides the eggs and bacon out of the frying pan and onto another plate, putting it on his lap and taking a fork and knife out of his pocket. He begins to cut everything into bite-sized pieces. “How did you find her?” he says.
Reaching to her plate, Yarah picks up another piece of bacon and lays a fried egg on it.
“One night, I looked up into the sky and wished on a star, just like in the fairy-tale books.” She folds the ham and egg like a sandwich and takes a bite. Orange yolk runs down the corners of her mouth. “And then she came to me in a ball of light.” Yarah wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Whenever I want to see her, I just wish on the same star and she comes to me.”
Leo looks at his plate and stabs a neat stack of square bacon and egg pieces with his fork, and then brings it up to his mouth, peeling it off one piece at a time. A big smile spreads across his face. “Are you sure this isn’t all part of your imagination? Do you really think she’ll come?”
“Yep.” Yarah pushes the rest of her breakfast into her mouth. “She’ll come. I’m her favorite little princess. That’s what she told me. We’ll call her tonight.”
“Right.” Leo crams the rest of his ham and eggs into his mouth, filling both cheeks, and jumps up. “Let’s have some fun today. Call your dragon. I want to go for a long ride.”
CHAPTER 18
Matt and Jessica stand side by side on the porch, holding hands, looking up into the stars. They are brighter and closer than Matt remembers.
“Happy birthday,” he says. “I hope you enjoyed tonight. I hope it’s not the last time.”
Jessica moves closer. “Last time for what?”
“For us to enjoy being together. Peaceful. Content. Happy. Normal. Everything I’ve always wanted and can’t ever get.”
“We can always just go back to Leo and Yarah and stay forever on her fairytale world.” Jessica winks, and her eyes drop to the ground.
“I wish that was an option. I really do. But . . .” Matt’s eyes hang on the stars.
“But what?”
“The dreams. Billions of people looking to me for help. Their only hope. How can I just turn my back on them?”
Jessica nods. “You can’t. I wish you could, so I would have you all to myself. Just a nice, normal, little family. But I can tell that’s not going to happen. At least not until we clean up that mess on Earth.”
“Exactly,” Matt says. “So let’s get it over with.”
“By the way, the cake was delicious.” Jessica moves down the stone steps, pulling Matt with her. “Shall we?”
“Ready or not, here we come.”
They end up on the lawn, walking under the starlight. Soft shadows fall behind them on the grass.
“Want to hear my plan?” Matt laughs. The sound of waves breaking on the beach pulls then toward the palm trees and the sand.
“Are you serious?” Jessica cocks an eyebrow. “You actually have one?”
“How’s this?” Matt stops and faces her, reaching into his pocket to pull out the cloaking box. He opens it and turns it over, letting his Stone roll out into his palm. “We jump to the exact GPS coordinates Little John gave to the kids. If he’s right, it’ll be somewhere in a freedom camp just outside of Vancouver. If he was able to make contact with them, they should be expecting us, even if we are a few months late.” He pauses, looking to Jessica for approval. “If all goes well, the people will welcome us with open arms, and we’ll all come up with a plan to fight Ryzaard.”
She nods. “So it’s a plan to have a plan?
“Yep. And a lot of ifs.” They walk under the palm trees. “Hopefully, they have a leader at the freedom camp. Someone we can trust. We’ll let them know we’re there to help. Find out what they know about Ryzaard. Perhaps they’ll have some ideas.”
“OK,” Jessica says. “Then what?”
“Then we say goodbye and jump back to Leo and Yarah. All within less than two or three hours. I don’t want to spend too long there. No telling what kind of trouble those kids might get into.”
“Sounds good.” Jessica’s eyes narrow. “But what if we get into trouble? Don’t we need a Plan B?”
“OK. You want a Plan B?” Matt slips his backpack off and drops it to the ground. He reaches inside and pulls out Jessica’s pulse rifle. “Here’s Plan B.” He closes the backpack, stands up and tosses the rifle to her.
“So we’re just going to wing it?”
“Pretty much.” Matt reaches under his shirt and presses on his sternum. A blue skin crawls over his entire body from the soles of his feet, over the palms of his hands, up his face and under his hair all the way to the crown of his head. Even his eyelids are blue, making the whites of his eyes stand out in stark relief.
Jessica raises an eyebrow. “You look different.” She cocks her head to the side.
“I decided I didn’t want to lose my head, so I made a few modifications to the armor so it covers everything. Including above the neck.” He opens his arms, the Stone in one hand and the cloaking box in the other.
Jessica points the pulse rifle at the ground, turns and backs in close to his body.
Matt’s arms pull her in. “Ready or not, here we come.” His gaze moves o
ut to the endless ocean.
A flash of white plays across the sand.
CHAPTER 19
The more he thinks about it, one thought dominates Ryzaard’s mind.
This might actually be fun.
He flashes into the dark alley running between high-rise apartment complexes at 3:13 AM local time.
Activating his jax with the brush of a thumb, he stares at the bluescreen holo projected above its cylindrical surface.
Sergi Yolapinolav sits in his chair, a look of quiet glee in his eyes as he stares into an open crate cradled in his arms and balanced on his knees. He has just returned from raiding a favorite specialty food boutique in Moscow. The box is full of liquor, chocolate, caviar, cheese, smoked herring and other delicacies.
His hand dips in and retrieves a single Belgium truffle wrapped in blue foil. With practiced efficiency, he rips away the wrapper, lifts the chocolate sphere to his nose, inhales, and then deposits it in his mouth.
He eats three more in quick succession before putting the box at the side of his chair and extracting a thin blue bottle of Stolichnaya Vodka.
Ryzaard shakes his head in disgust and slips the jax back into his pocket.
Enjoy your last meal.
As he walks in the direction of the main street, traffic is light. He turns left onto a wooden walkway through a wide yard. The grass is probably green, though it looks black in the moonlight.
The guard station at the base of the apartment complex catches his eye. No problem. Pausing behind a tree, Ryzaard takes the jax out of his left pocket and slips a Stone from its loop on his chest, gripping it in his right hand. A faint pink glow seeps through the spaces between his fingers.
He checks the precise GPS coordinates hanging in the air above the jax. His eyelids drop shut, and he is enveloped in light.
When he opens his eyes again, he’s standing in an emergency stairwell. A faint red light glows above him, casting abstract shadows onto the railing and floor. An advance team has already conducted a thorough security sweep, but he takes out his jax anyway and confirms that no cams, electronic sniffers or other surveillance equipment is lurking nearby.
It is time to set up the killing machine.
He slips a leather bag off his shoulder to the floor. Through the opening in the top, he pulls out the device and admires its Eiffel Tower design, the perfect melding of modern technology with the Stones.
Without such a machine, it would be impossible to kill a Holder as vile as Sergi Yolapinolav. The machine itself will neutralize Sergi’s Stone, using the technology of the Null Box, so he is unable to jump away or fight back. The built-in Amplification Protocol will magnify the power of Ryzaard’s Stones, allowing him to easily create an airtight seal on Sergi while the poison destroys his body and mind.
A truly elegant solution.
And then he recognizes the truth with a subtle nod to himself. Using the killing machine to liquidate the remaining Stone Holders is the best way to practice for the end goal Ryzaard has always had in mind.
Killing Matt.
The three Stones from his chest harness go into slots spaced evenly at its base. A clear glass cover slides over the openings, sealing in the Stones.
Ryzaard dips into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket and pulls out two tubes the size of his little finger, each manufactured at his special request.
How shall I kill the bastard?
He has intentionally waited until the last minute to decide. In his left hand, he holds a clear tube with the label Mercy. If he uses this one, it will put Sergi into a deep sleep before eliminating all oxygen, causing death in a few painless minutes.
The green tube in his right hand is labeled Vengeance. It contains a highly concentrated form of hydrofluoric acid mixed with a few other choice elements. The killing machine turns it into a gas, filling the sphere enclosing the victim, and eating away at the layers of his skin in a slow and exquisitely painful process before eventually causing death from stress-induced cardiac arrest.
So which will it be, Sergi? Mercy or Vengeance?
Ryzaard takes out his jax and activates the blue holo screen. He watches as Sergi laughs hysterically. Bolts of green energy jump out of his Stone at a woman lying on the floor a few feet away, exposing shattered bone and torn muscle. Her body rises and falls with each attack, moans of pain escaping from her mouth.
Ryzaard looks at his own hands.
And choses Vengeance.
He drops the green tube into the top of the device and listens for the sound of a vacuum seal. The next few steps play in his head like a jax video, and his fingers follow along, moving over the device without thinking.
Now it is time to act.
He stands a meter away from the machine, focusing his mind on the GPS coordinates of the spot exactly behind Sergi’s chair. The Stones glow light purple. When the light flashes, his eyes are already closed.
The air darkens, and Ryzaard hears laughter ripping through the silence. A large head set on a massive neck protrudes over the back cushion of the chair in front of him. Moving back four steps, he confirms the position of the killing machine at the base of the chair.
The laughter in the room suddenly stops, and the oversized head turns 90 degrees, trying to look behind the chair.
Ryzaard engages the device.
With Sergi’s Stones now neutralized, a white sphere of transparent energy appears above the head, floating for a moment like a halo before surging down on him and the chair, sealing him inside when it reaches the floor.
Ryzaard calmly walks to the front of the chair.
Sergi freezes. Brown liquid oozes from the corners of his open mouth. His eyes dart up and scan Ryzaard, as if he’s trying to decide whether the old man in the tweed jacket is real or a mere apparition.
“Hello, Sergi.” Ryzaard smiles broadly. “You’re going to die now.”
A fleshy hand grips a Stone and points it at Ryzaard. Jagged lines of yellow energy shoot out of its tip over and over, slamming against the inside of the sphere and dissipating into nothing.
Giving way to panic, Sergi holds the Stone in both hands. Projectiles of blue light shoot out like machine gun fire, bursting into sparks on contact with the inner wall of the sphere. Blue ripples ricochet across its surface.
But nothing penetrates to the outside.
Marveling at the ease with which he holds the sphere in place, Ryzaard folds his arms across his chest and raises an eyebrow.
A little fun before the final blow.
“Quick, Sergi! Maybe you can jump away.”
Sergi drops his hands to his lap, clinging to the Stone and closing his eyes. Light flashes inside the sphere. But after each flash, Sergi is still there, his eyes wide with terror, saliva dripping from his mouth.
“Take a deep breath,” Ryzaard says. “It will be your last.”
A green mist begins to fill the inside of the sphere.
Sergi grabs his throat. His chest heaves as his body is racked by coughing.
Ryzaard bends over the woman lying on the floor a few meters away. “Be still,” he says. Tears well up in his eyes. Placing a hand on the torn flesh of her back, his mind enters quickly and ranges through her body, past the spinal column, out nerve pathways to arms and legs, through her brain and internal organs. He sees the damage and the pain.
Quiet moans rise up from the woman’s lips.
Healing her will only increase Sergi’s suffering. Ryzaard decides to do it.
“I can help you,” Ryzaard’s voice drops to a whisper. “Hold on.”
The power of the three Stones fills his body and flows into the woman. Her shattered bones and torn flesh come together.
When Ryzaard looks up, Sergi’s gaze is upon him, arms reaching, eyes begging.
But the thing in the chair is no longer a man.
The creature tears at its clothes, ripping off the shirt with bloody hands. Its scalp droops off to one side, and then slides to the floor, landing in a pool of yellowish red g
oop. Large sections of puffy pink skin slide off its shoulders and chest, exposing raw muscle and bone that, until now, had been hidden under layers of fat.
Shrieks of agony rise from the mouth until the lips peel away and drop to the floor with the rest of the face.
At last, the stumps of hands reach up to its chest, and then slide back. The head rolls on the thick neck, coming to rest on the back of the chair. A final surge of movement tears through the body as it struggles for breath. Then the chest collapses as the lungs expel the last remnants of life through a hole at the bottom of the skull that used to be its mouth.
The body jerks one last time.
A blood-covered Stone drops from the chair to the floor with a loud thud.
The woman stands up next to Ryzaard and looks back and forth between his face and the heap of bleeding flesh in the chair, eyes blinking wildly.
“Spasibo,” she says, unsteady on her feet.
“You’re welcome.” Ryzaard smiles. “Go in peace.”
Moving her fingers over her body, she gives the remains of Sergi one last glance, then stumbles to the door, finds the knob and pulls it open.
Ryzaard hears her footsteps running down the hall, growing fainter until they are gone.
Reaching into his pocket, he takes out a mask, pressing the soft clear gel of its edges to his face. With his left hand, he brings out his jax and brushes an index finger along its length.
