by Jacob Whaler
And then it clicks. In the Mesh, imagination is reality. A child’s paradise.
An awesome weapon.
Matt thinks of the birds of prey that soar above the Mosquito Range back home. His face and nose become the eyes and beak of a mighty eagle. Arms extend out into a wingspan eighty feet from tip to tip with titanium carbide feathers. His chest and trunk bulk up and grow carbon polymer plating. Talons as large as samurai swords and as sharp as scalpels hang below his body.
Beating his wings, he shoots up, becoming the hunter instead of the hunted, looking for the dragon.
“Watch out!” Yarah shrieks.
From directly below, a blur pounds into his chest. The sickening crunch of inner bone structure mixes with an explosion of metallic feathers as he careens into multiple back flips. Righting himself, he heals the damage on the inside and bulks up the bone scaffolding, changing it to a spiral structure that can bend and absorb impact without breaking.
All with simple thought.
Twisting, he follows the line of the dragon arcing away above him. “Let’s go,” he yells to Yarah. “After him. Stay close.”
They both shoot up as the dragon hovers and stares above them. Matt positions his talons in front of his chest for maximum effect. When the impact comes, he avoids a direct assault and, tilting to the side, digs all his claws into the creature’s exposed belly, opening parallel lines of ripped flesh. As Yarah passes, she beats her wings into the massive head and leaves the dragon tumbling through white space in her wake.
But Ryzaard soon heals, just like they did.
The dragon comes to a stop and grows lethal-looking metallic horns on its wings, thickened armor, and multiple sets of legs with meat hooks for claws.
The battle in the Mesh is going nowhere. Matt tries to think of a way to do some real damage to Ryzaard.
“How do you find a Mesh-point?” he says.
“Just think it in your mind, and you’ll jump there,” Yarah says. “That’s what Michiko did when she was in the Mesh.”
“OK, I’ll give it a shot. Follow me.” Matt thinks of a name. The words burn in his mind in bold block letters.
MX Global Incorporated.
It’s location in the three dimensional cube space of the Mesh jumps out at him. He reaches out to it and pulls Yarah with him. White space becomes a blur of color and sound, a psychedelic tunnel.
And then he is there, floating in front of a mini-planet resembling a gargantuan snow globe that is clearly designed by a kid with a love for the ocean.
The sphere is at least ten kilometers across. Towers made of rotating circular floors are stacked hundreds of stories high like pancakes in delicate spirals. Each tower stands on an island of golden sand surrounded by turquoise water.
People walk out on balconies and float down to ground level for a stroll on the beach. Gravity reverses in the top half of the sphere so that, instead of blue sky above the buildings, there’s an upside down ocean with row upon row of perfectly curling waves flowing across its surface, dotted with surfers whose heads point down. Lush jungle and palm trees fill in the open spaces. Air transports with flexible bird wings hang in the air and move between buildings like graceful seagulls.
It’s a picture perfect work of art.
Matt gazes at the Mesh-site, a floating jewel in white space. “Welcome to MX Global, the company Ryzaard is using to take over the world.”
“What are we going to do?” Yarah says.
“Destroy it.” As Matt moves closer, a thin haze of light blue mist coats the outer layer of the sphere. “That must be what’s protecting it. Be careful.”
Yarah morphs from a butterfly into a white unicorn with horn-studded wings and razor sharp hooves.
“Let’s do it,” she says.
CHAPTER 127
Kalani stares into a bluescreen and shakes his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“What’s wrong?” Jing-wei says.
“Take a look. It’s right outside the company Mesh-point.”
They both stare at a huge eagle and unicorn floating in white space.
Jing-wei stands and bends closer. “Looks like a couple of random Mesh avatars. But very large. Beyond allowed size limits.” She sits down. “Isn’t MX Global supposed to be off-limits to ordinary traffic?”
“Not only are they very large, I can’t get an ID on either of them. And you’re right. They’re in restricted space. Security protocols should have kicked in to keep them away from the site. I can’t understand how they got here.” His fingers slide frantically across a slate on his desk.
“Could they be Yakuza?”
Kalani shakes his head. “No. I’ve seen what the hot shot Yak jocks can do. This is way out of their league. Too sophisticated.” He turns from the slate to another bluescreen. “I should have broken through their encrypted IDs already, but I can’t get any readings on their code.”
“Have you run it through the de-encryption protocol?”
“This is . . .” Kalani’s voice fades to nothing, and his head shakes in silence. “Incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He points at the eagle on the screen. “These avatars aren’t made of code. At least not any code I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at this.” He points at a readout on the bluescreen. Long strings hang down and intertwine to form a double helix. “It’s almost like they’re alive.”
As Kalani and Jing-wei watch, the unicorn doubles in size. From out of the upper right corner, a black dot appears, blurs into a line, and then reappears as a massive black dragon shooting toward them.”
“Another one?” Jing-wei stares. “What’s going on?”
“That’s Ryzaard,” Kalani says. “He let me know that he’d be cruising the Mesh in that form and scaring the hell out of any rogue elements. Wait a minute. Let me try something.” His fingers go up to the bluescreen, pushing and pulling images on its surface. The same double helix lines trail down.
Kalani and Jing-wei stare at each other and speak simultaneously. “It’s Matt and the little girl.”
“How did they get inside the Mesh?” Jing-wei’s jaw drops.
As they watch, the dragon dives for the eagle, but misses. The bird’s great talons rake lines of scarlet across the dragon’s back, and the unicorn gores it through the neck.
Leaning back, Kalani strokes the implant behind his ear. He drops to the floor and rests his back up against the side of the desk.
“What are you doing?” Jing-wei says.
“I’m going in.”
CHAPTER 128
“Yarah, can you keep Ryzaard away from me while I destroy this Mesh-point?”
“I think so.” Yarah watches the dragon roll away with a ripped up body. “He doesn’t seem to know how to fight.”
“Keep it up.” Matt turns to the massive sphere.
To do any real damage, he’ll have to penetrate the outer shell. He drops toward it with talons extended. As he gets closer, the blue mist resolves into billions of marble-sized spheres that fly toward him and stick to the outside of his body until they cover him in thick clumps like antibodies on a bacteria. In a few seconds, the blue coating hardens into concrete, making it difficult to move. Then it starts to burn.
So this is how they protect the sphere.
Channeling his thoughts through his Stone, he doubles his size and watches the hard chunks crack and fall away. As the blue spheres begin to cling to his body again, he imagines the coating sliding off like water on an oily surface.
The outer layer of his body instantly changes, and the blue falls away without sticking.
Imagination is power.
Shooting down to the glass dome that covers the MX Global Mesh-point, Matt extends his talons in front and dives with as much speed as he can muster. The dome rises up before him, large as the moon.
When the impact with the glass comes, it shatters into fine crystals as he breaks through. Like a tiny supe
r nova, hairline fractures shoot out in all directions. He watches them spread across the entire sphere, 360 degrees, in seconds. It becomes a spider web network of cracks.
Turning and casting a glance up, Matt finds the unicorn.
“You doing OK up there, Yarah?”
“No problem.” A half giggle surfaces in her voice. “He’s not a fighter.”
“Good job.”
Miles-long sections of the glass dome peel off and turn to pink ash.
“I’ve broken through the outer defenses. I need you down here. Bring Ryzaard with you if he wants to come. Maybe he’ll help us destroy the city.”
“On my way,” Yarah says.
As larger and larger pieces of the outer shell disintegrate, Matt has an idea. He concentrates on the blue mist floating in space around the glass dome and imagines it coating and destroying the MX Global complex. It starts to flow in snake-like currents that twist down toward the structures below him.
Matt plunges into a power dive through and past the seeping blue death. His first target is the closest tower of stacked discs. He beats his wings and aims for the bottom level. Just before he gets there, a pink blur shoots past.
“Beat you!” Yarah is a manta ray a hundred meters from wingtip to wingtip with a shark head. As she closes in on the target, her head and neck thicken into a massive battering ram. With eyes wide open, she slams into the bottom floor. Steel and glass explode. The entire tower lights up and disintegrates.
But Yarah doesn’t stop there. Keeping her head down and wings out, she rips through three parallel rows of structures and destroys hundreds of buildings.
“So easy!” she yells.
Matt extends his wings to full length, but only manages to bring down a dozen of the skyscrapers before a sharp pain stabs his back. Twisting, he spies a Polynesian man sporting overdeveloped muscles and neon tattoos. With a spear in his hand and war cries of vengeance, he jabs it down through Matt’s slick steel polymer feathers. Leaning forward, the little man prepares to thrust the spear into Matt’s eye. But before he can release it, the manta ray swoops down and cuts him in two at the waist.
As the two halves float away, a blue rain descends to coat buildings and people, surfers and transports, everything in sight except for the eagle and the manta ray.
“Turning their own security system against them.” Matt floats away next to Yarah as the pastel layer of blue hardens and begins to dissolve the city below. Towers tumble into ash. As the blue particles flow into the ocean above, the water boils and disappears. Surfing avatars fall like dead birds from the sky.
The sphere and its contents fade into gray, leaving nothing but a dirty stain in the vast white space.
“Lethal stuff.” Matt looks around. “Where’s Ryzaard?”
Yarah points with a wing. “Right over there. Just floating.” She laughs and then stops. “He looks angry.”
“Yes,” Matt says. “Very angry.”
As they watch, Ryzaard sheds the dragon shape and resolves into a Mesh-stylized version of himself clad in black leather pants and shirt. A collection of Stones glow above his chest.
“No more games.” He talks in a whisper that vibrates inside their heads.
Far off, a black square appears. It grows into a massive black wall extending horizontally and vertically across their line of vision and disappears out of sight on the right and left, above and below.
It’s coming closer. Matt detects the hint of a smile on Ryzaard’s face.
“What’s he doing?” Yarah says.
Matt moves close to her. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
They shoot away from Ryzaard in the opposite direction through a blurring tunnel of color.
Coming to a stop, Matt glances back.
The black wall is a churning, boiling surface moving through the Mesh from top to bottom, side to side, like the front of an approaching storm. Random explosions of color and jagged lines of lightning light up its interior.
A city of red skyscrapers made of elegantly stacked spheres floats in its path.
“It’s the Mesh-point of the International Red Cross,” Matt says. “They help people in disasters, and Ryzaard is going to destroy them.” He turns to Yarah. “We have to help. Get your Stone ready. We’ll throw up a protective shield around it.”
A thick blue line of plasma comes out of Matt’s Stone. Yarah moves close, looks carefully at the blue energy, and matches it with her Stone. The lines come together, and they draw a circle around the city. The circle widens into a transparent sphere enveloping the structures.
“Make it stronger,” Matt says. “The wall is almost here.”
The sphere widens into four layers. It’s color shifts through the spectrum from blue to pink and then bright red. People in the city stare up at the encroaching wall of black.
On impact, the wall peels back the layers of the protective sphere like a onion. The city is engulfed in black and bursts into small pieces that flash white and disintegrate.
The wall keeps coming.
Looking to the right and left, Matt sees thousands of other dots hanging in white space disappearing into the wall’s dark depths.
“He’s destroying the Mesh,” Matt says.
They both hear the voice of Ryzaard vibrating between their ears.
Not destroying. Just wiping it clean.
CHAPTER 129
Kalani stares into the black screen in front of him, lips whimpering in near silence.
“What’s going on?” Jing-wei gazes down at the black slate in her hand. She looks around the floor and sees nothing but blank screens. Thrusting her hand into a pocket, she pulls out her jax. All the telltales are dark. It looks black and dead. She plays its side with all four fingers, but nothing glows the warm orange color she is used to.
When she looks up at Kalani, a single tear traces a wet line down his face.
“He’s doing it,” Kalani says. “He’s killing the Mesh.”
“Who is?” Jing-wei jumps to her feet and yells at Kalani. “Who is killing the Mesh?”
He sits like a rock and stares into blackness. “Ryzaard.” Trembling fingers wipe a line down the blank screen and come to a stop at the bottom. “We lost the entire MX Global site to the attack. All the security protocols, all the encryption, nothing works. Now Ryzaard’s decided to take everything else down with it.”
The lights in the building go out, floor by floor, starting with the bottom and working up. The constant hum of the interior climate control system grinds to a stop, plunging the building into silence.
Footsteps begin running up the spiral staircase in the middle. The silence of the structure induces looks of terror across the faces of a throng of young people congregating behind Jing-wei and Kalani.
Their eyes are drawn to the one remaining bluescreen hanging on the wall and still lit up. It shows a real-time satellite view of Eurasia on the dark side of the Earth. Starting with the British Isles on the left and moving east past France, a wave of darkness washes over the land as the lights of civilization, all controlled through the Mesh, go out.
Palms drop down to their sides.
Fingers open and release dozens of dead jaxes to hit the floor with wooden thuds.
After two hundred years of electronic chatter, the world is quiet.
CHAPTER 130
“What do we do?” Yarah says.
Matt keeps his eyes on Ryzaard, still floating a hundred meters away, just in front of the wall.
“Jump through the connection back the way we came.” Retracing the mental map that led them to this point, Matt reaches out for the exit point that will take their minds back to the planetary network.
But he can’t find it.
Sorry, my friends. That connection has been severed. The Mesh, and everything in it, including your minds, will be wiped clean.
A half-grin climbs onto Ryzaard’s face.
They say you can’t be killed. Now I finally understand. I don’t need to kill your bo
dy. It’s enough to kill your mind.
Matt and Yarah both close their eyes and try to jump away, back to the planetary network, back to the mountaintop in Colorado, anywhere to get away. But it doesn’t work.
There is no place to jump to.
So long.
Yarah’s eyes meet Matt’s, wide with meaning. “Give me your Stone. I can do it,” she says. “Trust me.”
Matt nods and hangs still in the remaining white space as the black wall looms closer. Yarah’s shadow rises up before him and comes down, engulfing him in darkness as he opens himself to her. It consumes the world, leaving him empty and alone, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to think or feel.
CHAPTER 131
Yarah takes Matt’s Stone in her hand and turns to face Ryzaard in the churning darkness of the black wall.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Ryzaard says. “I know my implant is the only way out of the Mesh.” A thick purple glow clings to his body. “But I’m sorry. You’ll never make it through—”
She doesn’t wait for him to finish. Drawing on the power of both Stones, she throws herself forward into the darkness, searching for Ryzaard’s mind. Bursts of light flash, and she slams into a transparent metallic barrier. With a Stone in each hand, she holds them like daggers and swings the tips down onto the surface with no effect as it closes around her. A circle of light appears above on the other side of the barrier and grows smaller, closing like an iris. Instinctively, she understands what it is.
Ryzaard’s mind is jumping through his implant’s connection to the planetary network. In a few seconds, the connection will close, leaving her and Matt trapped on the other side of the barrier.
With a final jab, she joins the Stones in her hands and thrusts them down.
The hard surface shatters and falls away.
In the moments before it fades to nothing, Yarah lunges upward through the pinpoint of light.
Into Ryzaard’s mind.
She opens her eyes on a black plain. Torrents of rain pour down from a dark sky. A single thin mountain range rises like a jagged razor on the other side of the valley floor.