by Jacob Whaler
If Ryzaard is tracking the Stones, it won’t take long for the attack ships to find them, but it may give Matt the time he needs to help Yarah and figure out the next step. Somewhere, beyond the darkness around his mind, a nagging voice screams for attention.
What if I can’t bring Jessica back?
He pushes the thought into the darkness as grief presses down from all sides.
If Jessica really is gone, it will crush him later, like a tidal wave, and wash all joy out of his life with no hope of ever being whole again. But not now. Digging deep, he puts up a wall of stone and mortar in his mind to cut off any feelings of impending grief.
Later. He will deal with it later.
He forces himself to focus on Yarah. She’s trapped inside, waiting for him to find her and free her from the implant. Putting his hands on her shirt, he rips it in two, exposing the bony little spine that pushes up the skin on her back like a sub-dermal centipede. With trembling hands, he runs his fingers halfway down the vertebrae and stops, marking the point. Then he jumps in below the skin as an orange fireball explodes just outside the protective bubble around them.
Finding an opening, he slides between a vertebra and disk into the tight web of nerve tissue making up the spinal cord. Dropping down lower, it opens up like an ocean of massive branches breaking into forks, weaving together and tapering down to delicate fingers. He moves through the spine toward her brain, scanning for the black shadow of the encroaching implant.
But he finds nothing.
Fighting back the panic, he rises out of Yarah’s body, touches the implant with a fingertip and drops into the flesh just to the side of it. He finds one of the tendrils that branches out to her spine and hovers above it, following its length like a transport gliding up a river to its source. It twists into the spinal column, merging with nerve tissue and then breaking free to branch into smaller and smaller filaments.
Matt stops where one of the filaments comes to a point and studies its movement as it lengthens and grows like a bolt of lightning in slow motion. He drops down in scale and tries to penetrate it where it looks the thinnest, but it’s composed of the same material as the implant itself and impossible to breach.
The tiny tip of the tendril comes into view.
It’s hollow and open.
He drops down even more in scale and hangs suspended like a dot in the spinal fluid as the open tip of the tendril engulfs and shoots past him. Inside its darkness, he moves in the opposite direction back up to the implant. As he draws closer to the source, it’s harder and harder to move against a force that repels him like a powerful magnet in reverse.
He concentrates on his Stone and draws enough power to move against the tide.
Up ahead, a massive blue sphere rises over the horizon, boiling and exploding like the surface of the sun. Only two words come to mind as he gazes at it.
Beauty itself.
Fighting to hold his position, a current of energy pushes him back, like an unrelenting solar wind.
He circles around it, a dark speck orbiting a massive blue orb. To make further progress, he’ll have to find a way to penetrate the surface. He makes a push toward it, but the sphere thrusts him back as the deafening roar of a wind tunnel blasts in his ears. With his Stone close to his chest, he lays down a thin green layer of plasma around his body, points his Stone at the roiling surface of the sphere and shoots out a burst of energy. It makes contact with the sphere and opens a small hole.
Closing his eyes, he jumps through the hole to the interior. The opening slams shut behind him. He is left in a silent void.
And then he hears the distant sound of Yarah screaming.
He rushes to the sound, but it’s coming from every direction.
“Yarah!” he yells. “Where are you?”
The screaming doesn’t stop or diminish. It’s a constant and steady chord, like high pressure air leaking from a punctured tire.
He scans the darkness in every direction. A pinprick of light floats directly above him. He shoots toward it. As it grows from a dot to a circle, it pulls on him at ever accelerating speed. Reaching it, it engulfs and blows past him in a long white blur before disappearing into black space.
All motion stops.
He stands on the surface of a glass planet looking down into its core. A long tube three inches in diameter, reminding him of a rat’s tail, attaches to its surface between his feet. Looking around, a forest of similar tails extends up and out of sight. Still gripping the Stone in his right hand, he grabs the tail with the other hand, looks up and pushes off the planet.
After long minutes of travel, the tails begin to thin out. He slows his ascent. Shadows float above him. Emerging above them, he stops and stares.
The shadows he had seen from below come into focus. They are like the heads of great white sharks with jaws clamping down on the backs and chests of billions of people. Legs protrude up and out from the mouths as far as Matt can see.
He remembers the dream shared by all recipients of the implant. Large jaws chasing them, closing down.
It’s starting to make sense.
An alternate reality where Ryzaard holds the minds of humankind in bondage.
He looks down at the small legs protruding from the shark mouth in front of his eyes.
Yarah.
Reaching inside, he touches her lower back. “Yarah, can you hear me?”
No response.
He tries to pry the jaws open, but they don’t budge. Beating on the head, even with the Stone, doesn’t help. Somehow, he has to break the connection. Dropping just below the head, he holds the tail in one hand. With the Stone in his other hand, he shoots a blade of light out of its tip and slices cleanly through.
Like a machine, the huge mouth opens and releases the girl. It floats away into space.
Yarah’s eyes flip open.
Matt hugs her to his chest. “Are you all right?”
“I killed Jessica.” Yarah looks up with pleading in her eyes. “You tried to save her and I stopped you. It’s my fault.”
Matt shakes his head. “Not you, Yarah. It was Ryzaard.”
“Miyazawa called out to me, asked me to undo the chains.” She buries her eyes in Matt’s chest. “He said it was what you wanted, that he was fully healed. He grabbed me and put something behind my ear. It bit me, and I couldn’t get it off.”
Squeezing his eyes, Matt tries to cry, but there are no tears in the alternate reality they float in. “It’s not your fault. I should have known Ryzaard could work through Miyazawa. I should have protected Jessica and you.”
“Is she dead?” Yarah’s eyes are wide. “Is she really dead?”
“I don’t know. I tried to bring her back, but she was gone.” A wall of grief rises up to engulf him.
Not now.
He pushes it back.
Yarah stares up at Matt in silence, her eyes searching his face. “There has to be a way to save her. We can bring her back. The Allehonen can help.”
“I tried, Yarah.” Matt shakes his head. “But maybe there’s a chance if we work together.”
“She can’t die. We can save her. We have to save her.”
Jessica’s last words come back into Matt’s mind.
Kill Ryzaard.
“I hope so. Right now, we have to jump back and go after Ryzaard. It may be our last chance.”
“But Jessica . . .”
“Jessica understands that’s what we have to do. Hold on.”
“Wait!” Yarah looks out on the vast sea of bodies floating above the planet. “When I got pulled here, I saw something.”
“What was it?”
Yarah stares down, as though trying to remember. “I was moving through a maze with the Stone in my hand. Going so fast that it was all a blur. I saw a point of light above me. His mind was there, inside the light.”
“Ryzaard?”
“Yes.” Her gaze slowly returns to Matt. “He was controlling the maze and all the other minds in it. From above.
I tried to reach for the light. But then the big mouth came. Everything went black.” Her gaze goes down to the planet. “That’s how we can find him. Through the maze. It’s down there.”
“Can you remember where?”
“Maybe,” she says. “If I get back inside the maze. Inside the planet.”
“Let’s go.” Matt starts to drop down through the forest of tails with Yarah holding onto him.
CHAPTER 125
Ryzaard soars through the Mesh in his dragon avatar, dipping and climbing between Mesh-points floating like castles in the sky. With the death of the priest, Ryzaard is spending more real time at Miyazawa’s shrine preaching to the masses. He finds it to be a relaxing way to pass the time, and a good place to keep his finger on the pulse of the world.
He drops close to a Macau gambling establishment and enjoys the surprised look on the patrons as his claws rip off the roof and treat them to a hail of fire that leaves nothing but a cloud of dissipating ash in his wake. The Mesh-point is destroyed, along with billions of IMUs.
It’s exhilarating to cleanse the earth of such scum.
Organized crime is high on his list of targets. Most of the hardcore types have already been wiped out in the first wave of purges after the Nightmare, as it’s come to be called, their hearts simply refusing to beat in their chests. The mass cardiac arrests have been duly reported in the Mesh-news, followed by a show of joyous celebration by their repentant families, all of it engineered by Ryzaard’s prompting.
Hundreds of Children have already been found and forcibly given the blue jewel. It’s only a matter of time before there are no unmarked descendants of the freedom camps.
Matt is tied down on a Colorado mountaintop next to his dead girlfriend. Combat fighters are closing in and will be able to keep him busy until Ryzaard can devise a plan to deal with him. Matt’s grief at losing Jessica may be enough to give Ryzaard the edge he needs to finally kill the boy.
He will find out sooner or later that the implants cannot be extracted. It’s part of their design, and an integral part of the plan. The little girl and her enhanced abilities will prove useful in the future, if Ryzaard decides to keep her alive.
It’s all unfolding with effortless efficiency.
As he is soaring over the massive Mesh-point recently completed for MX Global, Ryzaard senses a sudden loss. A connection cut from the network, no longer there. As if, without warning, someone pulled a single live hair from his head. Jumping back to the network, he makes a quick inventory.
Yarah is gone.
CHAPTER 126
Matt lands hard on the planet surface and rolls. Yarah hits a few feet away.
He can’t push a thought away as it cascades down on him.
Maybe there’s time to save Jessica. Maybe he can still find her. Maybe she isn’t really dead.
Dropping to his knees, Matt takes the Stone in both hands and brings the point down on the glass at his feet. Cracks radiate out like veins. He stomps on it and breaks through, staring into the interior of the planet.
Plumes of neon color rise from far below, mixing and twisting into double and triple helixes. Low frequency vibrations permeate the space inside the planet.
“Let’s go,” Matt says. “Stay close.”
Yarah drops her head. “Right behind you.”
He bends forward like a diver plunging into the ocean and lets himself fall through the hole into a sea of color. Massive bubbles rising from below shoot past him. Small fingers touch his back, and the thin arms wrap around his neck as Yarah holds on.
Spreading out his arms like an eagle, Matt surveys the area below. “What are we looking for?”
“The maze,” Yarah says. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”
Through the colored mists below they see faint outlines of organic shapes, branches and tendrils. Dropping closer, Matt slows their descent. Coming to a stop, they hover above a massive landscape of billions of intertwined tubes ranging in size from hair-like filaments to trunks the size of large trees. Matt guesses the entire structure is larger than the moon and forms the core of the planet. It reminds him of what brain tissue might look like on a microscopic level.
“This must be it.” Matt looks into the tightly woven architecture of multicolored tubes and pathways. “It certainly looks like a maze to me. How do we get in?”
“I don’t know.”
Matt floats close and stretches out his hand, placing it on the nearest pink structure that looks like a blood vessel. It’s warm to the touch, alive and inviting.
Thoughts of Jessica rise again. With effort, he pushes them back and clears his mind.
“I think I understand. Hold on.” Matt’s eyes close, and he imagines he and Yarah jumping through the membrane into the tubular structure. The space around them flashes white, like it would with a typical jump. Matt isn’t sure what to expect when they land inside.
He has a surge of panic. The world turns into a blur of color and movement. “Are you there, Yarah?”
“Here,” she says. “This is the maze I was talking about. It feels the same as before.”
Matt turns to look in the direction of her voice and sees nothing. “Where are you?” He looks for his own arms and legs and can’t find them.
“Right here.” A hint of fear shades Yarah’s voice. “What about you?”
“I guess we’re both here, just our minds.”
Matt focuses on the scene around them. “Feels like we’re moving incredibly fast.” As he concentrates on the movement, a map starts to form in his mind of a complex of passageways, forks, turns, intersections, loops. It takes on a more detailed shape, and he sees that he and Yarah are moving through it in a circuit. “It’s a network of some kind, and we’re shooting around it.”
“It must be connected to the implants,” Yarah says. “I got pulled here right after I got mine.”
A schematic of the network distills in his mind. Matt finds that he can control his movement and move instantly on the shortest path to any point.
“Are you still with me, Yarah?”
“Right here.”
And then he senses the network isn’t a closed system. Like magnetic poles, there are two points that pull his attention away from all the other pathways. One of them like an entrance, and the other an exit.
“Do you feel the two points pulling at opposite ends?” Matt says.
“Now I do,” Yarah says. “One leads in, and one leads out.”
“Which one will take us to Ryzaard?”
He’s aware of Yarah pausing, searching with her mind.
“He’s near the one leading out of the maze,” she says.
“That’s where we’re going, then. Stay with me.”
Matt bends his thoughts to the exit point and instantly flashes out into neon white space. Floating islands of pastel color hover above and below, in every direction. Yarah floats at his side, a stylized caricature of herself with big eyes and long hair, like a Japanese anime.
“The Mesh.” Matt and Yarah say it together.
Yarah gazes from side to side, up and down. “Billions and billions of people. But he’s here. I can feel it.” Her eyes go to her body. “This isn’t really me, is it?”
“No,” Matt says. “Our bodies are still in the cave on the mountain.” He reaches out with a strand of thought. “Don’t worry. The attack ships haven’t found us yet. But we have to hurry.”
“What about Jessica?”
Matt pushes back a wave of fear. “Her last words were Kill Ryzaard. That’s what we’re going to do. We’ll come back to her after we’re done.”
As Matt says the words, a sense of calm comes over him.
I will find her.
Gripping his Stone, Matt focuses on one of the floating islands. Colors blur past, and he is standing at the center of an enormous rotating ring with spokes radiating out to the rim. Through its transparent walls, he can see the movement of thousands of shapes, some humanoid, others closer to insects or reptiles, all
of them standing in front of bluescreens with churning numbers.
“Must be a casino,” Matt says.
Yarah materializes a meter away. “He’s close.” She casts her eyes around wildly. “Coming closer.” Her thin arms suddenly shoot out and grab Matt’s wrist. “Jump!”
A dark shadow crashes down, and then they are floating a hundred meters away, watching the casino disintegrate into a cloud of gray ash. A massive black dragon blasts through it. The creature turns, hovers and stares at them with crimson eyes.
“Ryzaard?” Matt says.
“That’s him.” Yarah drifts backward. “He’s angry. Very angry.”
The dragon morphs into a blurred line, suddenly growing larger.
Gripping his Stone, Matt throws a thick wall of green energy around him and Yarah. As the creature slams into it, sparks and pain jolt through Matt’s bones. The energy shield disintegrates into tiny droplets. The dragon turns and whips its thorny tail, catching Matt in the ribs. A crush of bone and ripping flesh.
She’s dead. I killed her.
The voice of Ryzaard sears Matt’s mind like a hot wire in his brain.
He casts his gaze about for Yarah and sees her broken and distorted body floating five meters away. Looking at himself, he sees his own injuries in cartoonish detail, bones protruding through the skin, arms and legs bent at grotesque angles.
Yet he is still alive.
As he looks on, Yarah’s arms and legs turn into yellow rods and extend out twenty meters. Delicate veined webbing expands into the open spaces between them. Her body elongates into a huge segmented worm complete with compound eye and antennae.
She has become a massive butterfly and begins to scream in ecstasy.
“You can be anything you want. Anything you can imagine!” Whipping her wings, the air around Matt turns turbulent. “Hurry, before he comes back!”
The dragon appears in a power dive from straight above them. Yarah twists, jumps to the side and beats her huge wings. A strong draft whips the air and sends the dragon careening away into a tailspin.
“That was fun!” Yarah’s shouts of joy jolt Matt’s mind.