Stones: Experiment (Stones #3)

by Jacob Whaler

  “I’ve had a few upgrades since we last met.” Ryzaard stands up and grabs a Stone from his necklace. A massive beam of energy shoots out, and he swings it like a baseball bat at Matt’s feet.

  The energy membrane protects Matt, but the beam cuts away the floor and causes an explosion that throws them both out of the building into the cool night air.

  As they fall away into the darkness below, a thin film of purple energy coats Ryzaard’s body. His hand catches Matt’s ankle and pulls him close. Each of them struggles to find the other’s throat as they plummet to the street.

  Jessica rushes to the edge and stares, seeing only an explosion of sparks as the two men fight and throw punches at each other.

  The distinct sound of a transport floats above the building followed by an explosion that rocks the entire structure and throws her to the floor. As the smoke clears, she looks up through a ten-meter wide hole at Yarah and Alexa, standing at the open hatch of the transport, looking down.

  Alexa throws a fat cord out the open hatch. It drops through the breach. Stepping into the loop at the end, Jessica rises up out of the building to the edge of the hatch and scrambles into the transport.

  “Where’s Matt?” Alexa says.

  “On the street below, with Ryzaard.”

  CHAPTER 115

  Matt crawls up out of a hole in the pavement, a sphere of green energy still clinging to his body.

  Ryzaard lies in a rough spread eagle a few meters away. He stands and smiles. “More time wasted. That much closer to the end.” He holds out a jax in his open palm. A color holo jumps out of its surface showing the face of a young man. “Jerek, how much time left?”

  “Five minutes until the first detonation. All systems go.” The young man stares out of the holo at Ryzaard. “Are you OK?”

  “Just enjoying some exercise to pass the time.” Ryzaard grins widely. “We’re in position now. Please turn on the screen interface. Let’s don’t keep our audience waiting any longer.”

  “Roger that.”

  Ryzaard looks up and arches an eyebrow.

  For an instant, the floating 3-D advertisements on the glass skins of the buildings go eerily black. Then the massive screens light up with the same pictures of landmarks across the world. Words appear at the bottom.

  MX Global. Always at your side.

  Matt’s pulse races. His mind is frozen, groping for an answer, a way to stop Ryzaard.

  “Trouble yourself no further.” Ryzaard’s blue eyes bear into Matt. “There is no answer. No answer other than power. Once you understand that, you will be at peace. Now, make yourself comfortable and enjoy the spectacle.” He takes a step backward, presses both palms together in the center of his chest and sits on the pavement in the lotus position.

  From somewhere in the silence high above the skyscrapers, Matt thinks he hears the sound of a hovering transport.

  “I brought the transport here.” Yarah’s clear voice pierces a corner of his mind. “Above the MX building. Jessica’s with us.”

  The transport.

  As he frantically searches for a solution, the ship sticks in Matt’s mind.

  “I assure you, there’s nothing you can do.” Ryzaard opens one eye. “But you’re free to try.”

  Then it hits him.

  Matt looks up and vanishes.

  CHAPTER 116

  Save the people.

  Inside the ship, Matt’s eyes fall on Alexa. “Drop onto the roof and kill the engines.” Rushing past Yarah, he grabs her small hand and pulls her to the front. “I need your help.”

  Alexa runs her fingers across the blue screen on the com. The transport gently lands on a corner of the roof platform of the MX Global building.

  “Cameras are out, and the elevator shaft is non-operational.” Alexa looks into the open pit blasted in the center of the roof. “But heat sensors may still be active. My guess is we only have a few minutes before we’re detected.”

  “Jess.” Matt yells to the back of the transport. “You and Alexa hold off intruders.” He moves to the pilot’s chair. “Yarah and I need a few minutes of quiet and focus.”

  “What are we going to do?” Yarah says.

  “Sit, Yarah.” He presses her into the co-pilot’s chair. “We’ll do this together. Close your eyes and find me.”

  “I’m already there,” Yarah says.

  Matt’s lids drop. “Ship, prepare for direct interface.”

  “Interface ready. Point of contact established.” The gentle female voice of the ship floods the cockpit. “Please proceed to link.”

  In the darkness behind his eyelids, Matt sees the colored dots dancing on a cubic grid.

  Just like before, a red one flashes in the center.

  “Stay with me, Yarah.”

  Matt reaches out and wraps his mind around the red dot.

  “Link accepted.” The voice flows directly through his mind. “Waiting for request.”

  “Ship,” Matt says. “Can you access the Mesh?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Matt grips the glowing Stone in his hand. “Take me there.”

  The darkness vanishes, replaced by its exact opposite, a universe of white.

  The red colored dot expands into a massive cube, with thousands of multicolored points suspended in a three dimensional space of perfectly aligned rows and columns, a digital universe made of pixels of color going off to infinity to the right and left, up and down, front and back.

  “Still with me, Yarah?”

  Movement stirs in his mind. “Right here. I see what you see. What are we looking for?”

  “No idea,” Matt says. “Let’s have a look. Let me know if you see anything interesting.” Willing himself to move forward, Matt focuses on a row of dots directly in front of his eyes. He finds himself suspended over the row as it rushes by beneath him. Other rows float above and below.

  “What are the dots?” Yarah says.

  “I don’t know. Mesh-points?” He stops and focuses on a pink orb floating inches from his eyes. Reaching out with his finger, he gently touches it.

  “Request acknowledged.” The voice echoes through the white space.

  Matt finds himself suspended in gray twilight, looking onto a broad plain of multilayered lights, some flashing intense white, others flashing black.

  “Raw binary data,” he says. “How can we understand this?”

  “With the Stones?” Yarah says.

  “You’re a genius.” Matt drops his gaze to his hand and brings the glowing pink orb in front of his face. As he relaxes, he imagines the entire plain below him passing through the Stone.

  Nothing happens.

  “It’s like being inside a mind.” Yarah’s voice sounds tinny, playing in a remote corner, like a radio left on and abandoned. “Go into it. Be part of it.”

  As he thinks about her words, Matt floats into the lights. Instead of a hard plain with a defined surface, it’s more like an ocean. He sinks into its depths. Clearing his mind, he again holds out the Stone in front.

  Blue light explodes out between his fingers, wiping away the ocean.

  And then he sees it.

  An empty room opens up, letters suspended in midair.

  News of the World.

  The letters disappear and multiple videos play on floating squares, like wall tiles. As he runs his fingers over their smooth surfaces, the contents stream directly into his mind. Using both hands, he reaches out and feels them all. Information flows in multiple streams, simultaneous and clear.

  Pure clarity.

  No confusion, no chaos, just assimilation of data.

  “Looks like a news Mesh-point,” Matt says. “But we have to move on. Find a way to stop the war.” He looks up and pulls himself out of the room, rising above the binary sea. It collapses into a single dot floating in front of his eye.

  “Ship,” he says. “How much time has elapsed since our link was established.”

  “Six minutes.”

  A cry erupts from th
e core of Matt’s mind.

  I couldn’t save the people. Please don’t let them die.

  CHAPTER 117

  “How much time before detonation?”

  “Ten seconds,” Jerek says. “Would you like to join us as we monitor the progress?”

  “No thank you.” Ryzaard keeps his eyes closed and floats in thin darkness above the wood floor of his new office ten blocks from the old MX Global corporate center. “I’d like to be alone and observe it from here.”

  Without Matt there to see the display of power, there’s no longer any need to linger outside on the street. Although he can still sense Matt’s presence at the top of the old MX Global building, the exhilaration of the final moments casts everything else out of his mind.

  As he sits in the center of the room, the dark wall screens light up. Words form in his mind.

  Prepare yourself for the revelation of power.

  Jerek’s voice fades from his consciousness. “Three, two, one.”

  Ryzaard’s eyes jump open, staring at a wide-angle view of the Taj Mahal. Hundreds of tourists stroll beside the tree-lined fountain in front, like insects on an anthill. The surface swells up, causing the great building to crumble. Like a massive white jewel, the central dome hangs motionless in the air for a brief instant. As the ground rises up to meet it, ripples spread out through the surrounding concrete like water. A churning fireball bursts out of the earth, engulfing and disintegrating the remains of the dome on its way into the atmosphere.

  “All of India is on high alert.” Jerek’s voice sounds like an announcer calling plays in a soccer match. “Retaliatory strike on China in ten, nine, eight . . .”

  As the countdown progresses, a view of Tiananmen Square opens up on the right, the brightly painted portrait of Mao Zedong watching like a sentinel over crowds gathered on the plaza in front.

  “Shaped charges,” Jerek says. “Look to the sides of the picture.”

  Perfectly balanced pillars of flame gush out of the ground like geysers on the right and left flanks of the Square. A double line of fountains rises in front of the portrait, framing the face in fire. As the wall of the Forbidden City disintegrates and exposes the red structures within, pavement and ground peel away in front, leaving an immense black pit.

  Another view opens up, showing a fiery mushroom cloud rising over the Baoshan district of Shanghai near the port.

  “China immediately appeals to Russia for aid. Pre-arranged targets are acquired.” Jerek’s voice waxes poetic. “Fire rains down from SatNets in the sky.”

  The glass screen fills with dozens of images. Angkor Wat. Wat Phra Kaew, the great Temple of the Emerald Buddha, in the Phra Nakhon district of Bangkok. The white sand beaches of Halong Bay on the Vietnamese Gulf of Tonkin. The aging Petronas Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur. The Shwenandaw Monastery on Mandalay Hill in Myanmar.

  Detonations and destruction are coming too fast to focus on just one or two locations.

  “As the net widens, the carnage leap frogs into Europe and beyond.”

  The Kremlin lifts as a single unit ten meters in the air before collapsing in an inferno. The Louvre, Buckingham Palace, the Collosseum, the Pantheon. Each fall victim to the spreading scourge.

  “First wave is now complete.” Jerek says. “Based on Mesh traffic, we have the attention of the entire world. Commencing second wave.”

  Ryzaard closes his eyes. The intensity of the images pierces through veined lids.

  “Good,” he says. “Make it so.”

  CHAPTER 118

  They did it.

  Motionless, Alexa stares in horror at the holo above the jax. Flicking to different locations across the globe, explosions wipe away thousands of years of history and culture, snuffing out millions of lives with abandon.

  “The bastards really did it.” Her head shakes in slow motion from left to right, as if in a hallucigenic trance. “They really did it.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, a shadow moves below. Two men with eye scopes and black uniforms rush across the floor of the lab near the round table, looking up at the floating transport through the gaping hole in the roof Alexa just blasted. They pause long enough to point their rifles at the open hatch.

  “Watch out!” Jessica launches herself across the cargo area of the transport, tackling Alexa. The jax falls out of her palm as a pulse projectile gouges the wall and ricochets where her head had been a second before. Jessica twists and flicks a red switch on the wall. A line of fire rakes the inside of the transport a few inches to the right of her shoulder just before the hatch slams shut and self-seals, causing her ears to pop.

  The sound of small arms fire echoes from outside the ship.

  “Our light armor will hold off these guys until they bring in the LP cannons.” Alexa rolls out from under Jessica. “We have a few minutes, but not much longer. I suggest we take off.”

  Jessica sprints to the front of the ship. “Matt said to stay put, so that’s what we’ll do, at least for now.” She stands between him and Yarah.

  Both of them sit motionless, eyes closed, chests barely moving.

  With trembling fingers, Jessica touches Matt’s shoulder, hoping to wake him. “The holocaust is in full swing. It’s too late to stop it, Matt.” Black dots form on the floor at her feet. That’s when she notices tears dripping from her eyes.

  “Hey, can I get a little help?” Alexa has the tip of her pulse rifle pointing through a small port hole. “There’s another one over there.”

  Swinging her rifle off her shoulder, Jessica bends and looks through the hole. Two bodies lay sprawled out on the roof near the open gash. Two more are crumpled on what is left of the round table in the lab. Alexa’s next shot splinters the table, dropping the bodies to the lab floor.

  Alexa looks up from the rifle. “Any idea what Matt’s doing?”

  “I think he’s trying to interface with the ship’s Meshport.”

  “He might as well give up.” Alexa looks up over her sights. “Once the war starts, there’s no stopping it.”

  Jessica shakes her head. “Matt doesn’t like to give up.”

  CHAPTER 119

  Keep looking.

  Pulse racing, Matt gazes at lines of dots running off in every direction, each a portal to a world of data. Then he remembers the transport ship belongs to Ryzaard.

  “Ship,” he says. “Give me a list of secure entry points.” As he finishes speaking, Matt holds his Stone out in front, imagining all data moving through its interior.

  The voice fills the void. “Multiple access points available.” Blue text flows in the black space in front of his eyes. “Please select.”

  Jerek Grey

  Elsa Bergman

  Kalani Maaki

  Li Jing-wei

  Diego Lopez

  Mikal Ryzaard

  He instinctively reaches out and wraps his fingers on the last name on the list.

  The image of a locked gate appears. “Passcode required. Twenty-second limit.” A number pad appears on the gate, along with a square flashing the numeral 20. With each passing second, the numeral counts backward.

  “Any ideas?” Matt says. The counter is already on sixteen.

  “No,” Yarah says.

  Matt relaxes and lets his fingers hit random numbers.

  The counter flashes the number 9 and two words.

  Access denied.

  “Wait!” Yarah yells. “There was a green number on Ryzaard’s arm.” Two more seconds pass. “I can see it. 159604!”

  “Genius.” Matt punches the numbers as Yarah shouts them out.

  The counter stops at one, and then flashes red.

  Access denied.

  Stunned, Matt stares at the crimson words.

  The gate fades away.

  Ryzaard’s name is no longer on the list.

  Matt scans the names. One of the names triggers a memory of the holo Alexa showed him. The words float through his mind.

  Kalani has everything coded into a self-executing a
lgorithm.

  Matt’s arm shoots out, and his fingers touch the name Kalani Maaki.

  He braces himself to face the gate again. Instead, he sees the image of a fat sword hanging above his head, suspended by a thin thread. Seconds before the thread breaks, he dives forward, passing under it as it crashes behind him. Blue words appear in an arch above him.

  Malo e Lelei. Welcome.

  The sound of crashing surf is accompanied by a lush, high-definition view of a white sand beach. As he stares, a massive palm tree grows up out of the sand. Instinctively, he runs to it and starts climbing up, hand over hand.

  It’s like being in a zero G world, and he effortlessly scales it to the top.

  Once there, his eyes scan the large palm fronds gently bending in the breeze. Small images play on each of them. One of them catches his eye, covered with mushroom clouds and black and yellow radiation symbols. Releasing his grip from the trunk, he pushes off in zero gravity and lunges at it. His grip closes on the rough leaves.

  The view goes black.

  He’s floating in a floorless dark room with red and white dots on a massive bluescreen. It’s impossible to make sense of it. No patterns. Nothing but chaos.

  “Maybe you’re too close. Try zooming out,” Yarah says.

  As he thinks of floating away from the screen, his body shoots back until he can read it. Red text on a white background.

  Washington, D.C.

  He reaches out and touches the red text. The instant his fingertips make contact with the glass surface, the text changes from red to green. Words in black appear alongside.

  Detonation request confirmed. Proceeding to arm.

  His hand flashes out and touches the text again. This time, it changes back to red.

  Detonation request rescinded.

  Matt immediately comprehends. Green means the place name is set to detonate. Red means it isn’t yet.

  His task is simple. Don’t let anything turn green.

  As he scans the text, it extends above his head in a column and drops below his feet out of sight. That’s when it begins to really make sense.

  Self-executing algorithm.