by Jacob Whaler
“I’m not.” A quick calculation passes through the foggy mist of Alexa’s mind where a plan has come together on the way from the sushi counter to her seat. “He’s knows I’m here. I went to see him a couple of days ago.”
A waiter brings a plate piled high with caramelized salmon eggs the color of blood and drops it down in front of her, along with a clear tube that looks like a massive drinking straw. Alexa picks it up and pokes it into the center of the pile. One by one, the crimson eggs start to travel up the straw into her mouth.
Matt’s eyes flick over to Yarah.
Come on in, thinks Alexa. Read my mind. Nothing to hide.
“You’re still alive,” Matt says. “That can only mean one thing. You promised Ryzaard you’d deliver us to him.” He stabs another gyoza and brings it to his mouth.
Yarah’s mouth drops open.
Jessica’s hands curl into fists.
“Bingo,” Alexa says. “All true. At a time and place of my choosing.” She slurps the last of the salmon eggs off the plate and takes a long drink of miso soup. Her hands go down to the table next to Matt’s napkin, and her eyes stare back at him. “You game?”
“Bring it on,” he says. “Bring it on.”
CHAPTER 24
“Clever girl.” Ryzaard sits in front of the bluescreen, next to Jerek. “I’ll bet she knows we’re watching her. She played that scene like a Hollywood actress. Impressive, considering she was high.”
Diego stands behind them, shaking his head. “I must be stupid, but didn’t she just spill the beans and tell them the plan?”
“That’s the way it looked to me,” Jerek says.
“You’re both right,” Ryzaard says. “And wrong at the same time. Go back to the recording and take a closer look. Get ready to stop the image when I tell you.”
Jerek replays the scene in the restaurant, this time in slower motion. Near the end, Alexa picks up the cup of miso soup, brings it to her lips and drains it.
“Stop,” Ryzaard says. “Back it up two seconds and freeze the frame.”
“Done,” Jerek says. “Now what?”
“Advance it very slowly.” Bending closer to the screen, Ryzaard points at the lower right corner. “Look at Alexa’s left hand. It’s dropping under the table, reaching out for Matt’s knee. Now it makes contact. See her finger move along his leg?”
Narrowing his eyes, Diego bends forward. “I see it, but what is she doing? Looks like she’s just playing with him under the table.”
“Wrong.” Ryzaard leans back. “She wrote a message.”
Diego tips his head to the side. “What kind of message?”
“Who knows?” Ryzaard swivels his chair around to look up at him. “Whatever it takes to get him to show up.”
Jerek brushes his fingers along the surface of the bluescreen. “Let’s have a look from a different angle. I’ll tap into the restaurant’s other surveillance cameras.” His fingers work quickly on the blue surface, moving through other views of the same area. “Check this out.”
It’s a lower angle from a camera mounted on a table next to Matt and Jessica and has a clear view of their legs. Jerek plugs in a time value, and the video jumps to show Alexa’s hand moving forward and coming onto Matt’s knee.
Her fingers move as if they are writing letters.
“OK,” Diego says. “Still sounds to me like she’s playing a double agent. How can we trust her?”
“The answer to that is simple. We can’t.” Ryzaard puts his hands up behind his head and slowly yawns and stretches. “But we don’t have to. As long as we know the time and place of the meeting, we’ll be ready. Between your technology and my Stones, I’m not worried.” He looks up at Diego behind him. “Track her every move. But don’t interfere.”
“Got it.” Diego walks to the spiral staircase twenty meters away and descends below to his office.
Ryzaard turns back to the bluescreen. “Sorry for the interruption, Jerek. Where were we?”
“Talking about implants.” Jerek touches the screen. It shows a magnified view of a green jewel smaller than a fingernail and shaped like a claw, fatter at one end and curing around to a tapered point. A stylized version of the Stones. “I’ve had an entire floor of my best and brightest science monkeys working on this around the clock for a week, trying to reverse engineer it so we can understand how it works. That’s the staring place if we hope to improve it.”
Ryzaard’s chameleon-like pants and shirt shimmer metallic gray. “And the problem is?”
“We’ve taken the implant apart, carefully and meticulously, to get a look inside.” The bluescreen zooms in on pieces of the green jewel laid out on a white background. “The problem is that there’s nothing there.”
“What do you mean?”
Jerek shakes his head. “The technology that made this is far advanced beyond us. It’s more than solid state. The inside of the implant appears to be just one material. No wires. No silicon. No bio-electronics. It’s like a solid rock. Like the Stones. We’ve run every test on it we can think of, and we still get no readings.” He looks up at Ryzaard. “Where did you say you got this?”
“Off-planet,” Ryzaard says. “Some friends I found through the Stone. Not very likeable characters. I’d rather not deal with them anymore.”
Jerek shakes his head again. “It’s a real stumper. Other than your Stones, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Keep working on it,” Ryzaard says. “I’m sure you’ll have a breakthrough.”
“Maybe.” Jerek leans back and stretches. “I’ll let you know if we do.” He sighs audibly and reaches for a cup of black liquid and takes a sip. “In the meantime, it might be easier to contact your off-planet friends and ask for an upgrade.”
Ryzaard’s clothes flash crimson red. He says nothing as he stands.
“Can I ask a question?” Jerek says.
“Of course.” Ryzaard stops. “Whatever you’d like.”
“What makes you so sure we can mass produce implants?”
Ryzaard’s hands go into his pockets. “Because I’ve seen it.”
“Are you serious?” Jerek’s jaw drops open.
“I had a vision of it. Decades ago. Millions of Shinto’s followers coming to the shrines to get a jewel behind their ear.”
“But how?”
“I’m not worried.” Ryzaard turns to leave. “The way will open before us. Keep working. And keep everything I just told you strictly secret.” He makes his way up the spiral staircase.
CHAPTER 25
Miyazawa bows deeply at the side of the podium and walks to it.
An audience of 500 Shinto high priests sits solemnly below him. No members of the Council survived the destruction of the heli-transport. With the governing body gone, he called an emergency meeting of representatives of all the prominent factions within the Earth United Shinto Alliance.
Most of them sit with their arms crossed. Looks of quiet rage stare back at him.
After a rancorous meeting, it has taken the threat of immediate termination of their generous stipends to get their attention. Under pressure, they have just agreed to an emergency amendment to the EUSA charter. It does away with the Council entirely and gives Miyazawa full control, subject to no oversight.
Benevolent dictatorship.
“I regret the urgent circumstances that make the actions taken tonight necessary. I understand the unusual nature of our requests. My heart aches for the loss of the revered Council members, my own father among them. The spread of Shinto requires a streamlined leadership structure. I can assure you that this was their ardent desire in my last meeting with them. If only they could have been here to tell you themselves.” His eyes scan the audience and smile inwardly. It will be the last time he needs to meet with them. “It is the will of the Kami for whom I speak.” Stepping to the side of the podium, he bows deeply and exits the building through the back of the stage before any priest can ask questions and press for answers.
As he emerges outside, h
e pauses to look up at the dark dome of the night sky above him. City lights wash out all the stars, leaving the moon to hang alone, a silver disk floating in a black sea. Instinctively, his hands rise up, palms together, lips moving.
My brother. Together we shall prevail.
The doors of the transport open, and he slips inside. The whole beast flexes as it silently jumps up into the Tokyo sky and heads straight out over the bay. At a height of ten thousand meters, multiple lines of manufacturing plants dot the coast, outlining its organic shape like a neon map. High-speed water transports line up perpendicular to the harbor, waiting to load the newly built and ritually blessed Shinto shrines and torii gates. Other ships are already making their way out to sea, bound for both American coasts. In two days’ time, they will offload the precious cargo. Towns and cities in Kansas and Florida, Arizona and Wyoming are waiting to receive the bounteous blessings of the way of the Kami.
At the request of Miyazawa, the air-transport moves up the east coast of Honshu until it reaches the northern extreme, where it banks smoothly to the left, over the mountains, to Miyazawa’s home shrine.
It touches down at 2:00 AM local time. Miyazawa steps through the open doors of the transport onto the moonlit courtyard. The familiar crunch of white pebbles underfoot is gone, replaced by a silkier texture that flows beneath his weight. Reaching down with his right hand, his fingers close around the tiny round balls and comes up with a handful. He opens his palm and holds it up in the pale light.
Pearls worthy of a god.
CHAPTER 26
“Trust me?” Jessica looks at Matt as if he has just delivered a scholarly presentation on why the moon really is made of cheese. “Alexa wrote the words trust me on your leg, and you believe her?”
Matt lies down on the bed and stares at the ceiling. “She wrote some other words before that, but I didn’t catch them in time.”
“Yeah,” Jessica says. “It was probably you’re crazy if you.” She sits on the edge of the bed next to him. “Ryzaard knows Alexa is here, and Alexa knows we’re here. She used to work for him. Maybe she still does. It all leads to one conclusion.”
“A trap?”
“If we’re lucky. At least a trap gives us some choice about walking into it.” Jessica entwines her fingers with Matt’s. “But we might not be so lucky. If Ryzaard knows we’re here, he holds all the cards. He can just pop into our room and kill us all, whenever he wants. We’ve lost the element of surprise.”
“If Alexa is working for him.” Matt squeezes Jessica’s hand. “But maybe she isn’t. Hard to say. We just have to be careful. And Ryzaard doesn’t hold all the cards.” He turns his attention to Yarah, sitting on the other bed in the room and reading a book. “Did you see anything inside Alexa’s head?”
The little girl looks up. “I took a look, but it was really cloudy in there. Just a bunch of mist and fog and sunshine. But it looked like she was telling the truth.”
Jessica shakes her head. “I’m sure she was telling the truth, but just not all of it. It’s clear she’s worried about Yarah reading her mind, so she got high on derms before she came to the restaurant to turn the inside of her head into mush. Didn’t you see it under her shirt on her lower back? Big purple spot. Why would she do that unless she had something to hide?”
“Good point.” Matt lets his eyes float back up to the ceiling looking for images to pop out of the random plaster pattern. “You always think things through clearly and logically. Logic tells me that we’re outgunned. We should get as far away from Ryzaard as we can and never use the Stones again. Just find a comfortable place and live quietly. Off the grid. Just like dad and me.” His eyes drift down from the ceiling to Jessica. “We can do that. It’s not too late. Your call.”
Jessica looks out the window into the darkness at the building across the street. “My call.” Holding Matt’s hand, she stares in silence for a long time. “Run or fight. That’s always the question, isn’t it?”
Matt stares back at her. “You’re so beautiful.” A sudden warmth hits him like a cannonball in the chest and flows out to his hands and feet. It passes up through his neck and cheeks, making his eyes water. “The selfish part of me wants to run away, protect you and Yarah. Leave the world to its fate.”
“What does the unselfish part of you say?”
Matt’s eyes close. “Stay. Fight. Because it’s the right thing to do. It’s what the Woman would do.”
Jessica nods. “Then we stay. My call.”
“Regardless of the cost?” Matt’s eyes glisten.
Jessica gets off the bed without answering. “OK, so we’re going to stay. What’s the next move?”
“For me to get off the bed so you can get some rest.” Matt rolls to his feet. Gently grabbing Jessica’s shoulders, he steers her back to the bed and pushes her down. “Yarah and I have some work to do.”
Looking up at him suspiciously, she lies down. “What kind of work?”
“Don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere. We need to talk about the Stones. Holder to Holder.” Matt plops down on the other bed where Yarah sits with her back to the wall, reading a book. His eyes scan the pages. “The Three Musketeers. All for one, and one for all, right?”
Yarah looks up. “Right.”
As his eyes sweep past the book, Matt sees a tiny black spot on Jessica’s heel. At first he dismisses it as a piece of dirt. After weeks in the mountains of East Tennessee, dirt has become a constant companion. Staring more closely at it, he sees that it’s too perfect to be a speck of dirt. It’s round on one side and comes to a point on the other.
When the realization hits him, he springs off the bed and kneels in front of Jessica’s feet, examining the spot closely. He tries to get a fingernail under it and pull it off, but it’s bonded to the skin.
Jessica’s eyes flutter open. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a speck on your heel,” Matt says. “I don’t think it’s dirt.” He reaches into a pocket of his backpack, rummages around and pulls out a pocketknife. With the blade sticking out, he kneels and brings it close to Jessica’s foot. “Hold still.”
Carefully working the knife edge under the black spot, he cuts through a thin layer of calloused skin and lifts it and the spot above it away from Jessica’s heel.
“What is it?” Jessica holds her head off the pillow, but is having a hard time keeping her eyes open. “A tick?”
“Nope.” Matt holds it close to his eye. A thin tail of red fiber hangs down from the tiny object in his hand. “A tracking dot. Someone wanted to make sure they knew your location at all times. Looks like it’s still on and working.”
Jessica lets her head fall back to the pillow. “I guess that answers our question about Alexa.”
“Afraid so,” Matt says.
CHAPTER 27
Ryzaard opens his eyes and inhales the smell of salt.
Seven Stones float above the dark fabric of his chameleon suit. A few meters away, a large column of veinless jade runs from floor to ceiling like the trunks of the smooth sycamore trees he recalls from his youth. A thin film of green energy hums quietly a few centimeters above his flesh. He activates the transparent skin armor Jhata gave him by touching his sternum. It crawls over his flesh like a million centipede legs.
It’s a precaution. Ryzaard isn’t sure how Jhata will receive him.
From a spot suspended in mid-air on the other side of the cathedral, a flash of purple lightning jumps out at him. It lands painlessly on his chest, stopped by the green energy field.
“Back so soon?” The swishing sound of a silk kimono drifts into his ears.
He whirls, trying to find the source of the movement. Another bolt of lightning strikes him in the back. This time, the pain is like the stab of a knife between his shoulder blades. His trunk and legs tingle and go numb. The colors of the room blur into gray. One knee drops to the floor.
“Please, Jhata.” Ryzaard’s other knee comes down onto the marble floor. His body sways like a wobbl
y child’s toy. “I come in—”
“Peace?” A woman dressed entirely in red suddenly towers over him. The stylized body of a black spider stands out on her chest, its long legs extending down her thighs and up over her shoulders. “At least you have the respect to kneel. Why have you come?”
As the pain subsides, Ryzaard’s vision begins to clear. “I need your help.” The bones in his spine mend together, and sensation floods back into his legs. The lithe form of Jhata stares at him, her long blonde hair in stark contrast to the red-black kimono. Dozens of Stones float above her willowy waist.
“Help?” She takes a step back and grins. “Has the boy already proven too much to handle?”
“The boy is of no consequence. I have him under surveillance and will deal with him soon.” Ryzaard leans against a green pillar and pushes himself to his feet. “I’ve come to discuss far weightier matters.”
“Weightier matters?” Jhata quickly scans him from head to foot. “How could anything you wish to discuss fall into the category of weightier matters? Coming from someone of your status, it’s a contradiction in terms.”
Ignoring the insult, Ryzaard dusts off his pants, which have now taken on the green color of the pillars around him. “I need your advice.” His head drops in an awkward bow.
“If you want to talk to me, drop your shield as a sign of good faith.”
Ryzaard hesitates. “Will you promise not to strike me?”
She laughs and turns her head to the side. “Promise? That’s a joke, right?” Jagged veins of energy reach out of her Stones and dance across Ryzaard’s body. A pleasant tingling sensation runs across his skin. “I made you. That gives me the right to do whatever I want with you, whenever I want.” She turns and walks to an open door. “Follow me. We can talk outside.”
Moving in line behind her, Ryzaard moves out past the jade columns under the massive stained-glass windows that adorn the top half of the cathedral walls. As she walks, he notes how she moves like a cat, slow and smooth, with no wasted motion or effort.