by Jacob Whaler
What do you have in mind?
“A mutually beneficial arrangement. Along the lines of what you said when you first came.” Her fingers curl into fists, digging into the tank. “We go after the boy together. And the little girl. We destroy them and everyone close to them.”
I won’t be anyone’s slave.
“You’re in no position to argue, but I’ve decided I don’t want you as a slave. It consumes too much power to maintain the master-slave relationship with a Stone Holder. Believe me, I’ve done it before.” Jhata lets go of the tank and turns her back to Ryzaard. “Besides, my kingdom is filled with slaves. What I’m looking for is more of a business arrangement. Mutually beneficial, purely arm’s length.”
The anger recedes from Ryzaard’s mind.
Please explain.
“I’ve had a look in your mind. You want to remake your world. To bring about paradise, or at least your vision of paradise.” She turns to face him again. “I can give you a head start.”
And what do you ask in return?
“Simply what you proposed. That we work together to rid your world, and the universe, of the boy and the little girl. Isn’t that what you want as well?”
What if I refuse?
“Obviously, you’re in no position to refuse anything. I simply want you to understand what I’m going to give you. Of course, I could always just withdraw and leave you to yourself.” She looks up, allowing the composition of the fluid inside the tank to change, withdrawing the life-sustaining chemicals. Then she waits patiently for his reaction.
It comes swiftly.
Fear and panic return to Ryzaard’s mind. He is slipping away. Making a show of leaving him, she turns her back and starts to walk away.
Agreed.
She stops and turns. “Good. To effectively use your Stones and wield their power, you need your body back. I’m going to give it to you. And then some.” She returns to her prior position in front of the tank and restarts the nourishing mix that sustains Ryzaard’s brain. “Now, relax. When you wake up, you’ll be a new man. You can thank me later.”
A protest rises from his mind, but it’s quickly overcome by the new fluids absorbed into his brain, shutting down his consciousness.
Now for the fun part.
CHAPTER 91
Jessica fingers the walrus tooth.
Her eyes drop to the half-eaten food on the tray in front of her. For some reason, a sense of dread spreads out from her stomach. Her fingers inch toward the pulse rifle that lies on the tatami beside her.
“What’s wrong?” Eva glances to her left at Jessica.
Jessica’s fingers close on the weapon. “I think I just need a little air.” The color drains out of her knuckles.
“Would you like to step outside?” Michiko, on the other side of Jessica, leans forward and motions toward Eva. “Why don’t both of you come with me? Let’s get away from all these men.” She pushes away from the table and gracefully stands up, facing her father at the other end. “Please excuse us for a moment. Jessica isn’t well. We’re going to step out for some night air.”
Hashimoto-san has a worried look on his face. “Be careful. Don’t be gone long. It’s no longer safe outside at night.”
“Don’t worry, father. No one would dare lay a finger on me. Besides, we aren’t going anywhere.”
Holding her pulse rifle, Jessica stands and follows Michiko across the tatami floor and out the sliding door. Eva is close behind. They all proceed down the hallway. On the way, Michiko slips away into a hall to the right.
“I need to change out of this kimono into something less inhibiting. Please get your shoes and wait for me in the garden. I’ll be out in a moment.” She disappears into a side room.
Jessica and Eva pull on their shoes and walk out the front door.
A full moon floats above the horizon in the east.
“Something tells me we need to leave, now.” Jessica scans the night sky. “Do you hear that?”
Eva casts her glance at the rocks and shrubs. “Hear what?”
“That’s just my point. No cicadas or crickets. The frogs are silent. It’s too quiet.”
“You’re right. I wonder—”
“Sorry for making you wait.” Michiko bounds out of the front door in pants and a T-shirt. She takes two steps and freezes, motioning for Jessica and Eva to get down.
They all drop to their knees. Michiko points first at a dark shape in the middle of a field a hundred meters away. Straining to see in the moonlight, Jessica finally finds it, looking like a giant insect body clinging to the ground. Two massive rotors hang at opposite ends above it.
Attack-helis.
Jessica wants to scream.
Michiko puts a finger to her lips and points straight forward at a low-slung sports car parked in the driveway with its front end facing away from the house, twenty meters away. She starts crawling to it on her belly, motioning for Jessica and Eva to follow.
Once Michiko gets to the car, she reaches up and touches the side. Doors on both sides pop up like beetle wings. Michiko crawls in the left side behind the wheel while Jessica and Eva scramble into the back seat from the other side.
Without a sound, the doors lower and seal shut, vacuum tight.
“What’s going on?” Jessica says.
“I don’t know, but that’s a Japan Defense Force combat ship parked out in our field. My guess is they know you’re here.” She touches the steering wheel and engages the electric motor, reaching for a button on the car-com to kill the motor-tone. Inching forward in silence, they move away from the house.
Jessica looks back at the dark outline of the combat ship. A sudden burst of flame lights up its side.
“No—”
An immense ball of fire slams into the center of the main house. The walls and roof melt away, leaving behind a empty crater and a rising cloud of ash and dust.
Clenching her jaw, Michiko stomps on the floor. The car shoots forward, spitting up pebbles behind it and throwing Jessica and Eva back against the seat.
Once they get to the main road, Michiko turns the car hard to the left.
Pulling herself up into a sitting position, Jessica looks out the window. A burst of fire lights up the black shadow of the combat ship.
“Watch out!” she says.
The road explodes ten meters behind the car. When the shockwave hits, it throws the car forward. Mushrooming flames lick at the back window as Michiko swerves, struggling to stay on the road.
“They’ve seen us,” Eva says. “Once they get a lock on our position, it won’t take long for them to score a hit.”
“Hold on,” Michiko says. As she coaxes more speed from the engine, the car jumps forward and the speedometer sweeps far to the right. Coming to a low rise in the road, all of them float up out of their seats when they go airborne over the crest.
On the other side, a large truck lumbers along in the same lane.
“Grab your seat,” Michiko says. “I’m going to pass.”
Gliding to the right behind the truck, another flash lights up the side of the combat ship.
It takes less than a second to pass. As the car moves out in front, a loud whoof trails behind. Looking back, Jessica sees the truck’s cargo unit turn bright red and swell outward as it explodes like a balloon from internal pressure and disintegrates. The cab breaks off, tumbling end over end and coming within a few feet of the car.
“I think they have a lock.” Eva yells. “The next one’s going to hit us.”
“Not if I can help it.” Michiko reaches out to the car-com and poses her fingers over a button that looks like a red circle with a line through it.
Jessica’s eyes go large. “What are you do—”
Michiko pulls the steering wheel hard to the right as her finger hits the button.
As the right side of the car begins to lift in the air and go into a roll, Jessica is encased in soft bladders that instantly burst out of the front, sides, bottom and top of the passeng
er compartment. At the same time, the road explodes ten meters in front, sending out a fireball that blooms bright orange like an unfolding rose. The car goes airborne and rolls into one side of the flames and out the other as it veers off the road and down a gentle hill on the right side.
Shrieks of horror fill the interior of the car. Jessica realizes it’s her and Eva doing the screaming.
When the car finally makes its last roll and comes to a stop, they’re upside down. The bladders fall away. A popping sound like automatic gun fire fills the silence as the outer shell of the car and chassis break apart and crumble to the ground, leaving the three women lying on a soft bed looking up at the stars.
Smoking wreckage is heaped up all around them.
“Quick!” Michiko says. “Everyone out. Follow me.”
Scrambling to her feet, Jessica is pulled up by Eva’s arms. With the pulse rifle slung over her shoulder, Jessica sprints behind Michiko, following her down the hill and across a field into a grove of pine trees. The ground is soft and mossy underfoot.
Michiko stops to catch her breath. “Everyone alright?”
“No injuries,” Jessica says. “It’s a miracle.”
“Same here,” Eva says.
Jessica rests her hand on Michiko’s shoulder. “Your family. Your father.” She looks into Michiko’s eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Staring forward, Michiko avoids eye contact. Wells of water float in her eyes. When she blinks, tears cascade in streams down both cheeks. Shaking with waves of emotion, she turns away and buries her face in her hands as she sinks to the forest floor.
Eva and Jessica kneel, each draping their arms over Michiko.
The sound of human voices floats down from the crest of the hill above them.
The black silhouettes of soldiers in combat gear stand out against the full moon. They move down the hill and surround the wreckage of the car. One of the soldiers pulls a box-shaped instrument out of another soldier’s backpack and starts scanning the ground with it.
“Come on.” Michiko stands on her feet, still shaking. “They’ll be coming after us.” She moves off into the forest.
Slinging her pulse rifle over her shoulder, Jessica stands and stumbles after Michiko, followed by Eva.
The soldiers start shouting.
Jessica glances back.
A few of them break away from the group and run down the hill, staring at the ground.
CHAPTER 92
Jhata begins with the basic bone structure.
One thing is clear. Ryzaard has done a lot of work on himself over the years, keeping his spine unusually straight and bone mass strong.
But time and age have still left their marks. Beginning at the skull, Jhata pours her attention over the bones and cartilage, centimeter by centimeter. Using the mechanical arms as hands, she strengthens, fills in, and changes the shape in subtle ways, making the shoulders broader, reinforcing the vertebrae. Femur bones are lengthened. The tibia and fibula are stretched longer.
When he wakes up, Ryzaard is going to discover that he’s three inches taller.
Now for the real upgrades.
The lab equipment begins to synthesize a liquid carbon mix and funnels it through the mechanical arms. They dance over the entire skeleton, injecting the bio-inert mixture directly into the bones where it fills the voids and hardens into a flexible latticework of support webbing.
Ryzaard’s bones take on a slightly gray color, but they are going to be stronger than steel and self-healing.
In a fleeting moment of self-reflection, Jhata thinks about the many lives sacrificed in developing this technology so she could perform the same upgrade on herself years ago.
Next, she turns her attention to the meat of the matter, Ryzaard’s muscular system. The upgraded skeleton makes it possible to make parallel improvements.
A quick analysis of the stripped-off tissue reveals what is universally true of humans. The early development of a large brain meant that muscle structure was left in the dust. Not having such a crutch, other animals moved their bodies, rather than their brains, further along the evolutionary path.
It’s time to do some catching up.
The biolab begins to synthesize sheets and chunks of new muscle, each molded and formed to precise designs that play out in Jhata’s brain like schematics for a new machine. Following her plan, Jhata doubles the density of the new tissue, the maximum amount possible without suffering a decrease in function. While she’s at it, she quadruples the amount of fast twitch muscle being synthesized for Ryzaard’s legs so he might, if he chooses, rival the swiftest human runners on any planet.
The array of elegant mechanical arms takes the bright red tissue, complete with white tendons and ligaments, out of the biolab and grafts them onto the skeleton body. It is painstaking work, but Jhata enjoys the diversion. When it’s done, Ryzaard looks much more like a man than he did hours ago.
After taking a break, Jhata gets back to work.
The enhanced bone and muscle structure require a higher energy input, which means more efficient absorption of oxygen and waste elimination, not to mention the equipment to process increased caloric intake.
A new set of lungs come out of the bio-lab with double the efficiency of Ryzaard’s old pair, requiring an upward adjustment in the size of the rib cage. With the help of microscopic sensors on the tips of the mechanical arms, newly synthesized organs are planted into place and attached. One by one, other internal organs emerge from the bio-lab, each based on the original design with modifications modeled after Jhata’s own body.
The whole process gives her insight into making further improvements to herself.
Installing a new circulatory system proves to be the most challenging step. With the original templates at her fingertips, Jhata concludes it’s outdated and inefficient. Using the computing power of the Stones, she calculates a more proficient algorithm and lets it direct the mechanical arms in laying a network of blood vessels, from the large arteries adjacent to the heart to microscopic capillaries worming their way through Ryzaard’s toes. The vastly improved energy and stamina he will enjoy are sure to please him.
Miraculously, the brain and spinal cord are almost undamaged. Synthesizing more tissue, Jhata directs the instruments to restore the nervous system to the exact configuration in Ryzaard’s body prior to his injuries.
She takes a closer look at his brain.
It’s a magnificent piece of equipment compared to most humans. A bit of tweaking will make it even better. She goes inside the prefrontal cortex just behind Ryzaard’s eyes and has a look. It’s here that the chemical basis for human empathy can be found. But too much empathy, a common human weakness, is a hindrance to the rational exercise of power. It’s what denies most people the ambition and drive to achieve what they really want and deserve. They worry too much about hurting others.
In her own case, Jhata made alterations to herself many years ago.
What she sees confirms her suspicions. While Ryzaard is definitely on the lower end of the human spectrum, he still has vestigial empathic faculties that interfere with the efficient use of force. She makes the proper adjustments to mirror her own brain structure. When Ryzaard wakes up, he will no longer have to make justifications to himself about the power of the Stones. In passing, she makes a few upgrades to the brain architecture that will boost its computing power.
The last thing is the kill switch. As smart as he is, Ryzaard probably suspects that she will insert one. It might be the reason why he was still resistant to opening himself fully to her.
Long experience has taught her many things, but the most important of them has become her motto.
Don’t trust anyone.
Be careful with mutually profitable alliances. They must be temporary. And terminable at will. Her will. Jhata has no illusions. The time will come, sooner or later, when Ryzaard will no longer be a profitable investment. It will be imperative to have a quick and efficient way to shut him down.
&
nbsp; That’s what the kill switch is for.
She places it carefully in the architecture of Ryzaard’s mind, taking its shape from a common object on his world. A Shinto torii gate. Only she knows its location. When the time is right, she can slip into his mind. By the simple motion of stepping through the gate, she can bring instant death to him.
One structure remains to be placed on him. Skin.
The bio-lab is already creating it, using the fragments of his prior skin as a start, just like all the other organs, but making improvements. And the upgrade to be made here is obvious.
Ryzaard needs the same embedded armor in his skin that she had mistakenly conferred upon Matt.
The new outer covering comes out in pieces. Fine sensors on the fingers of the arms attach the skin to Ryzaard’s body, forming a flexible seal over the muscles.
The last task remaining is to cross-check and test the many systems, comparing them with the original, insuring that it all comes together. Poring over his body, the instruments poke and prod, measure and analyze, pausing to render minute electrical impulses or chemical injections. Working without sleep and altering her own body chemistry to keep her alert and awake, Jhata spends hours insuring that her work is perfection.
Of course, perfection is impossible. There will be quirks here and there. But Ryzaard can fix the problems himself, fine-tuning his own body from the inside like an exquisite instrument.
Like Matt, he has been unmade and remade.
Now it is time to wake him up.
She adjusts the chemical composition of the liquid bath, making it more viscous. It takes on a pink color and will taste sweet in Ryzaard’s mouth.
His new eyelids flutter open, revealing new eyes with miniature telescopic lenses. Rising above his head, the arms reach up. Other muscles in the body react, flexing, stretching, tightening, contracting.
She lets him look himself over for a few minutes.
He finally stares at her. “What have you done to me?”
