by Jacob Whaler
“Two more Stones, all your own. You could have them if you wanted. No cooperation required. Just kill them both. That’s got to be tempting.”
“It is, believe me. But the unfortunate truth is that the Stones are much more powerful when the Holders cooperate. Magnitudes more powerful. Naganuma is right about that.” Ryzaard takes another drag on the cigarette. “How is he doing in there?” Ryzaard pointed at the door leading to the room with Matt.
“Fine, for the moment,” Alexa says.
“Tell me, what do you think of him?”
“What do I think?” Alexa lies back on the sofa and looks up at the ceiling. “Just seems like a good kid caught in the middle of something way beyond his control.”
“What would you do if you were him?”
“Use the Stone to find a way out, or a way to kill you.”
“Precisely,” Ryzaard says. “But as long as he is on the blue rug next to the Cube, his Stone is useless. Quite an elegant solution.”
“When are you going to start?”
“Funny you should ask.” Ryzaard stands and drops the cigarette, still burning, into an ashtray on the desk. “Right now.” He walks to the door leading to the adjacent room, and then stops and faces Alexa. “Is everything ready?”
“Yes, the power is on, both chairs have been wired. The recalibration of the trading algorithm is complete. Elsa will be waiting to test it out with the new Stone. Same for Diego and his location protocol. We are all very anxious to see how the addition of the boy’s Stone boosts performance. We’ll be in the lab. Patch us in when you’re ready.”
Ryzaard moves closer to the door. “Where’s the girl?”
Alexa pushes herself off the sofa to her feet. “She’s working in the building today, a few floors down. I can have her here in minutes. Just ask.”
“Excellent.”
Reaching for the cigarette in the ashtray, Alexa brings it to her lips. “Aren’t you going to have Naganuma join you in the experiment? I think he was expecting to be there.” She takes a deep drag and blows smoke into the middle of the room.
“No, not the first time. I’m going in alone.”
“Be careful.” She moves across the floor to the corridor. “Anything could happen.”
CHAPTER 90
Matt Newmark.
Kent hears the words, but doesn’t comprehend their meaning, as if they are a foreign language. He backs up the recording and listens to them over and over. Arctic cold descends upon him. The slate slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor.
He finds himself in a black bubble as sound and color drain out of the world, leaving him alone. With trembling fingers, he gropes for a half-empty bottle of water and drains it, takes a deep breath and forces himself to face reality.
Matt is the boy in the room. Ryzaard is going to torture him. The result will be death if Matt doesn’t cooperate. They’ve got Jessica too.
It’s all going to start in a few minutes in a soundproof room. Kent won’t be able to listen in. He’ll have no idea what’s going on.
MX Global’s corporate machine is going to grind up and murder another member of his family.
He has no choice.
Rescue Matt and Jessica, or die trying.
It takes less than five minutes to fill the backpack. On his way out the door, he stuffs a soft diode into his ear. It’s got a wireless link to his slate so that he’ll be able to hear anything said in Ryzaard’s office outside of the round room.
The plan of attack, still half-baked, races through his mind as he rides the elevator down to the lobby. At the bottom, the glass door slides open, and Kent passes out into the sunlight where the afternoon sun is moving down the western sky somewhere on the other side of the Hudson River. The sidewalks of midtown Manhattan are still hot and muggy.
He heads straight across the street to the front of the MX Global building.
Half a dozen guards in black uniforms stand in his way. With his pulse pounding in his temples, Kent tries to smile beneath his sunglasses and strides past them to stop just short of the massive glass doors at the entrance. Like a tourist, he cranes his neck up to marvel at the 175 floors that rise almost half a mile into the sky above him. At the same time, his fingers drop down to his side and release a soft, grey lump the size of a marble into a joint in the concrete. He presses it in with the sole of his shoe. Then he turns and walks away from the building past the guards.
Just another sightseer out for a walk through the City.
A block down the street, he ducks into a small bookstore to make sure no one is tailing him. From there, he plans a walk going north and arcing to the west. It should take about half an hour and give him a chance to refine his plans, clear his head and have at least a fighting chance at success. Then he’ll slip down into the subway and double back to the MX Global stop.
Hopefully Matt will still be alive an hour from now.
Like all companies in the city with worldwide operations, MX Global keeps a full working staff around the clock. Kent will arrive on the premises just after 5:00 in the evening. The guards will be busy monitoring workers passing in and out through the security portals. Kent has a little surprise waiting for them. At the height of the chaos, he’ll pull the trigger. If all goes well, he’ll be in the building three floors below ground level with the first stage of his plan accomplished and over.
With a small backpack swung over one shoulder, he wears a sky blue T-shirt and full-length utility pants, both woven from nano-treated Titanite fibers. There’s a matching beanie and gloves in his side pocket. The Titanite emits randomized white-noise light when stimulated by a modulating magnetic field. He can generate one of those with his jax. If he’s caught on a video surveillance camera, he’ll appear like a fuzzy blob. A crude way of hiding his identity, but the best he can do.
Under normal conditions, an operation like this would require an entire team, with separate specialists for penetration, demolition, retrieval and exit. But Kent works alone. Always has. Always will. With no time to work out an elaborate plan and only the equipment he can carry on his back, he’ll have to hope for the best.
Small enough to hide in a closed fist, the bright red Magnetic Explosive Pulsed Power units are the most delicate cargo in his backpack. The MEPP’s super-magnetic neodymium cores are packed with shaped charges. Trigger it, and a focused shockwave travels inward, compressing the core and releasing a pulse of high energy vibrations. One unit carries the same destructive power of a hundred pounds of old-fashioned C-4.
Thanks to shaky Chinese design, the MEPPs are notoriously sensitive to sudden jarring movements. Drop one on the ground from four feet and there won’t be enough of you left for a laboratory slide.
The technology is new enough that neither the US military nor law enforcement has it, as far as Kent’s research has revealed. Contacts in the underworld provided him with a few samples. He’s glad he brought them along.
In addition to the MEPPs, he has his slate with its universal decryption protocols and other electronic goodies, night vision goggles, two hundred feet of double weave carbon fiber rope and an assortment of climbers and scalers.
And, of course, the crossbow.
CHAPTER 91
Ryzaard stands silently before the door. He looks down at the holo screen of his jax to see Matt sitting on the sofa inside the high-security room. He pulls in a deep breath and walks to the door. It slides open with not so much as a whisper.
“I’m back.” Ryzaard moves carefully around the outer edge of the room and stops behind Matt.
“Where’s Naganuma?” Matt says, without looking up.
“He could not make it for our first round, but he is still here. I am sure we will see him later.”
Slouching on the sofa, Matt makes a studied effort to avoid looking up at Ryzaard. “Why haven’t you tied me up?”
“No need to use those barbaric methods anymore.” Ryzaard drops his hand into the outer pocket of his tweed jacket and takes out the s
mall stone box. He flips up the lid, turns it upside down, and lets the Stone fall out into his other hand. Then he casually tosses it to Matt.
Matt shoots off the couch like a coiled spring, his arm outstretched to its full length for the Stone, the toe of his right shoe on track to kick Ryzaard in the groin.
With the ease of a ballet dancer, Ryzaard takes a small step back, focusing his mind. Matt hangs in the air, motionless, his hand inches from the Stone.
I should kill him now, thinks Ryzaard. It would be so easy.
Instead, he wraps his fingers around the Stone floating close to Matt and lands a foot hard into Matt’s belly. When he’s done, he calmly walks to the other side of the room and drops Matt’s Stone back into the little box. Turning to face him, Ryzaard relaxes and allows time to flow again, standing still to observe the scene.
Matt’s fist closes on empty air, and he crashes down onto the floor, biting into his tongue and curling up in a fetal position around his bruised belly, looking confused and hurt.
“Surely we don’t have to play these games again, do we?” Ryzaard says.
Matt lifts his head in the direction of the voice. Blood flows out the corner of his mouth onto the floor. “Go to hell,” he says, forcing the words out slowly between gasps and swallows.
“No reason to become angry.” Ryzaard walks back to Matt, his shoes making crisp tapping sounds on the hard floor with each step. He stops and looks down on the curled figure on the floor.
Matt swallows hard and seems to brace for another blow, making a visible effort to slow his breathing. “Not fair,” he says in a whisper.
Ryzaard bends down near Matt’s face and begins to whisper. “Nothing is fair. That is the essence of power. Either you have it or you don’t. And right now, I have it, and you don’t. A simple truth, but an important one for you to grasp if you would like to preserve your life. You need to have a clear understanding of reality. To see reality as it truly exists, to quote your friend, Mr. Naganuma.”
Matt’s eyes close, “He’s no friend of mine.” A pool of blood forms beside his lips.
Ryzaard smiles. “He saved your life.”
“He betrayed me.”
“That may be true from your perspective. But he really had no choice. You see, both of us want the same thing. We may disagree over details, but it is only details.”
“I hate you all.” Matt’s foot jumps up to the back of Ryzaard’s knee, just brushing it before stopping, frozen in time.
Ryzaard stands over Matt. A stream of red stretches from his mouth to the floor, bloodshot eyes stare forward with a look of cold concentration.
Incredible persistence. Naganuma was right.
Ryzaard abruptly leaves Matt and walks out of the room back into his office and over to the desk. Pulling open the bottom drawer, he finds an old book, thick as a couple of bricks, with yellowed pages.
The Complete Works of Plato.
He smiles and goes back into the room where Matt still lies motionless on the floor. Gently placing the book under the middle of Matt’s right thigh, he adjusts it slightly, and then stands back to appraise its position.
It should work.
Ryzaard jumps up and comes down with both feet on top of Matt’s thigh. There’s an audible snap, like the breaking of a tree branch in the forest.
Satisfied, Ryzaard moves back a couple of steps, folds his arms and relaxes into the flow of time.
Matt’s raised leg finishes its movement through the air toward the back of Ryzaard’s knee, but Ryzaard and his knee are no longer there. Instead, pain visibly explodes in his broken thigh bone. Involuntary screams of agony escape from his mouth as his neck and spine arch back.
Ryzaard waits patiently with folded arms until the screams die down into quiet whimpers.
“Perhaps you’ll listen to me, now that I have your attention.” He starts pacing back and forth past Matt, still writhing in pain on the floor. It’s as if Ryzaard is a professor again, delivering a lecture at Oxford, hands clasped behind his back.
“Three words, Matt, three words.” The silence is broken only by the sound of shoes on the hard floor. “Life is suffering. That is the fundamental flaw in the design of this world. And, believe me, it has been designed. Evil has free reign. The powerful prey upon the weak. The weak suffer. Sickness, disease, poverty, death, manipulation, fear, capitulation. Human potential is ravaged and squandered in the Darwinian jungle we all inhabit.”
Matt opens his eyes and looks up at Ryzaard. “Why?” he says, the word barely escaping his bloody lips.
“Why? Why is the world like this? The answer and the responsibility lies squarely with those who made it, those who rampage through the universe building worlds with abandon, each flawed and filled with suffering. You know who I am talking about. You have seen them.”
Matt groans. “The Allehonen.”
“Yes! They have the power to stamp out evil, and yet they refuse to use it. They build a planet, set everything in motion and then simply walk away, turning their backs on the those whom they profess to love, abandoning them to wasted lives of suffering and pain.”
Matt lies on his back. His eyes slowly open and close. The ebb and flow of his breath, the rise and fall of his belly, begins to take on a rhythm, a steadiness.
“The Allehonen,” he whispers. “They’ve shown me things. They will help if we trust them.”
Ryzaard walks by and roughly kicks the book out from under Matt’s thigh.
A silent scream passes through his throat, but he closes his mouth before it can escape.
“You’re wrong,” Ryzaard says. “They won’t help. That would violate one of their fundamental principles. Their prime directive. Non-intervention. But there is an answer to all of this. It’s an answer given to the world over two thousand years ago.” Ryzaard bends down and picks up The Complete Works of Plato and begins to thumb the wrinkled and yellowed pages. “No doubt you’ve read this before, in your freshman Western Civilization class.” He licks a finger and turns a few pages, stops and runs his eyes down the lines of the paper. “I’ll quote from Plato’s Republic. Listen carefully. Four simple words. Philosophers must become kings. That is the answer. The Philosopher King. Power concentrated in the hands of wise rulers, people like you and I and Naganuma, who can protect the weak and eradicate suffering.”
Matt shakes his head slowly from side to side. His mouth opens. “Dictatorship, totalitarianism, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Tenzing.” He spits out a mouthful of blood and swallows. “It’s been tried. Always fails. Always turns into a nightmare. More suffering than before.”
Ryzaard lowers his voice to a whisper. “You’re right. But this time it will be different.”
“Absolute power corrupts…”
Letting his eyes drop down, Ryzaard holds his breath and stops the flow of time. He stoops down and stares into Matt’s face, seeing the lips parted as if in the middle of a sentence, frozen in pain. Ryzaard’s eyes become shiny with liquid.
A tear drops down onto Matt’s face. An old word of scripture from the Christian Bible floats through his mind.
Blessed are the merciful…
With a gentle movement, he kneels on the floor and puts his hand on Matt’s abdomen. In an instant, he sees the ruptured spleen and, with minimal effort, heals the wound. Then he reaches up to Matt’s mouth and closes the cut in his tongue. Pressing fingers into Matt’s thigh, the bones come together, fusing back into perfection.
With ease, Ryzaard puts one hand under Matt’s back and another under his legs, lifts him up and walks to the closest dental chair, staring down at Matt as a father might look at his son.
The son Ryzaard never had.
And never will. He drops Matt into the chair and pulls a thin gold card out of his shirt pocket.
He steps back and relaxes, restoring the flow of time. At the same instant, he swipes his thumb on the card. Metal binders at Matt’s ankles and wrists light up and close around him.
“Perhaps now you are rea
dy to cooperate,” Ryzaard says.
Matt looks around in surprise at being in the chair and out of pain.
Ryzaard pulls out his jax and brings it close to his mouth. “Alexa,” he says. “Bring the girl in.”
CHAPTER 92
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, they confirmed it. They’re in his office right now.” The tall man adjusts his sunglasses in the late afternoon sun. “He’s gone. He took his backpack with him, along with bottles of water, protein bars, climbing equipment and his slate.”
“Climbing equipment?” Little John drops back in his camp chair in the shade of the tent, looking out through the open flap at the highway where two large trucks are lined up, bumper to bumper. Several dozen youths are unloading pallets of canned food and water. “Sounds like he’s going somewhere for a while. Any idea where?”
“They found this in his office.” The man hands a jax to Little John.
He looks at the holo screen, a jumble of dark lines, circles, and boxes. “What is it?”
The tall man takes a step forward. “Design plans for MX Global world headquarters. The bottom ten floors. They also found one of these.”
Little John looks again at the image on the holo screen. It’s a small red cylinder-shaped object. “What is it?”
“The Children did a materials analysis and some quick research on the Mesh. It’s new, not yet available on the market. But it’s got a magnetic core tightly packed with shaped-charges, the kind used in demolitions and mining.”
Little John shakes his head. “I don’t believe it. He’s really going to do try to take them down.” His gaze goes back up to the tall man. “Do we have someone on his tail?”
“Yes. One of the best. Right behind him.”
CHAPTER 93
Kent steps off the subway at exactly 5:07 in the afternoon.