Stones: Experiment (Stones #3) (51 page)

“A most regrettable incident.” Hashimoto-
san
bows his head at the other end of the table.

“In case you haven’t heard, there have been other incidents.” The captain shoves chopsticks loaded with steaming white rice into his mouth and chases it down with a pickled radish and miso soup broth. “Five more freedom camps were attacked in the same way along the West Coast of the US. Hundreds have been killed.”

“None of it has been reported on the Mesh,” Michiko says. “If what you say is true, whoever is behind it must have a lot of power.”

“His name is Ryzaard, President and CEO of MX SciFin,” Jessica says. “And he’s got the resources to bribe or threaten whoever it takes to keep the killings off the radar.”

“So that’s why you decided to disband the rest of the freedom camps?” Hashimoto-
san
looks at the captain.

“Yes.” The captain’s eyes drift to Jessica. “I suppose so.”

The other members of the crew eat without pausing to look up.

“It’s a good thing.” Hashimoto-
san
exchanged glances with his daughter. “Yesterday they came, asking questions.”

“They?” Jessica says.

Hashimoto-
san
nods. “Japan Defense Force troops. They were searching for someone at the freedom camp, an American man with a Japanese mother. They said it was urgent, that he was on the loose and dangerous, a criminal and threat to society. When they found out the camp had been disbanded, they were surprised, caught off guard.”

Jessica loses her appetite. Nausea threatens what she’s already eaten. She lays down her chopsticks. “Who were they searching for?”

All eyes go to Hashimoto-
san
.

He reaches into the pocket of his
yukata
robe and takes out a jax. With a few brushes of his fingers, a holo image of a young man, taken from the shoulders up, floats in the air above his hand. His dark hair, eyes and facial features suggest Asian ancestry.

Jessica’s feet and hands go cold as she stares at Matt.

T
ime to begin.

Jhata stands in front of the sphere, refreshed after a full night of rest. Enveloped in a cloud of clear energy, her body tingles and her feet float above the floor. Lightness permeates her body.

This is going to be fun.

The fluid inside the tank is no longer white with the texture of honey. It now has a pinkish hue and the consistency of water. Circulating in a loop that takes it into the tank, past Ryzaard’s floating body, and back out to be filtered and refreshed, the liquid bathes him in a rich mixture of chemical nutrients.

It’s all a necessary measure to keep Ryzaard alive while he’s stripped down, layer by layer, system by system, unmade and remade as Jhata sees fit.

Better. Stronger. Faster.

Some of the basic architecture of his body will remain intact, and his brain will be mostly original equipment. Mostly.

But the rest is a blank slate.

For a fleeting moment, she considers waking him to share her plan to unmake and remake him, but then immediately dismisses the idea. There would be unending questions, concerns, fears. Her explanations would be inadequate.

Time will be wasted.

In a way, Ryzaard has already given consent. He came asking for help. She intends to give it to him in her own way.

And so much more.

Holding a Stone loosely in each hand, Jhata closes her eyes.

Using the increased clarity given her by the Stones, a multi-dimensional facsimile of Ryzaard’s body opens up in her mind. Each system and organ stands out in nearly infinite detail, as if it were a series of templates stacked one on top of the other. She moves through the templates with ease, noting the function of each element, its original condition and the damage it has sustained. Much of what she sees is beyond repair.

The skin is the first to go.

An array of thin mechanical arms attached to vertical columns outside the tank pierce through the soft membrane of the sphere. Agile fingers on the ends of the arms go to work, hooked up to a direct feed from Jhata’s mind. The mechanical fingers become her fingers.

Starting on the outside, she strips all remaining layers of skin from Ryzaard’s face, chest, back, arms and legs. It comes off in great sheets, like a second copy of him, floating away in the clear solution and dissolving into a thin gray mist.

Jhata drops to the next level.

Raw muscle lies exposed, some bright red, some black, all of it bathed in warm liquid. She inspects the damage. Whole sections of tissue are missing. Both calves are mostly gone, burnt to the bone by molten rock. Little remains on his left arm, hamstrings and back where the damage was severe. The left thigh is riddled with holes. Wherever she looks, the surviving tissue is dead and stiff, useless and beyond salvage.

Instead of having a patchwork of old and new muscle, Jhata decides that
all
of it has to go.

Starting at what is left of his feet and working up, she strips the remaining muscle away in long ribbons, taking with it tendons, but leaving behind the delicate latticework of embedded nerves and blood vessels. Fragments of calf muscles are cleaned to the bone and discarded. The quadriceps pull away in one piece, dissolving into a pink cloud and floating away in the solution. Pectorals and deltoids, biceps and trapezius, all of them slip off and fall away.

The last area to be picked clean of red tissue is the skull. What remains of the facial muscles is scooped out, taking with them the last vestiges of Ryzaard’s identity.

Inside and just below the white arches of the ribcage, the lungs lie exposed like sponges. Normally bright pink, these are gray and shriveled, seared from the inside, damaged beyond repair by the hot gases that Ryzaard inhaled. Jhata notes their structure, and then rips them out and throws them away. The liver hangs above the stomach. Intestines curl and loop below. Blackened and hard, kidneys sprout behind them. She investigates the remaining organs one by one. Most are non-functional. All but the spleen are removed and dissolve away in the liquid bath.

To her surprise, the heart is beautifully intact and unspoiled. Ryzaard must have worked on it regularly after finding his first Stone. He owes his life to the fact that his six Stones were able to keep it going.

The major blood vessels from the heart are functional, but the farther she travels down the body, the less optimal the circulatory system becomes. Any veins or arteries within a few inches of the surface have suffered damage. Cutting and removing, she clears away vast sections of net-like capillaries, all of which will have to be replaced.

For her final pass, she goes deep into Ryzaard’s brain. It’s mostly undamaged, encased inside the skull. From its structure and size, Jhata concludes he is high-functioning, near genius level. Traveling the spinal cord, she follows the nervous system out into the arms and legs where it’s been ravaged by the burning and destruction of muscle tissue. She had hoped to preserve it, but most of it is discarded without further thought.

System by system, she analyzes and discards, cuts and clears away, like a gardener pulling weeds and pruning plants, until all that is damaged, useless, or less than optimal is stripped away.

Now that the body has been torn down, Jhata takes a moment to gaze upon what is left.

Ryzaard is little more than a specter of white bones, a beating heart, a spinal cord and a brain. One bare eyeball peeks out through a hole in his skull. In the deeper recesses of his body, clouds of microscopic nerve tissue and blood vessels float and move with the current.

Now it’s time to rebuild.

Jhata toys with the idea of waking him up. The more she thinks about it, the more it pleases her. But Ryzaard will need to be able to see to appreciate what she is doing.

Referring internally to the templates of his body stored away in her memory, she starts up the biolab that stands close to the sphere. Composed of transparent towers, it is filled with machinery for synthesizing new tissue from a vast library of chemical raw materials, shaping and molding it to exact specifications. With the mechanical arms, she attaches elegant and delicate strings of tissue to Ryzaard’s facial and neck bones. A new eyeball goes into place with the necessary muscle structure to control it.

Each of the Stones on her belt and in her hands glows brilliant yellow, providing the vast computing power to synthesize compounds and manipulate molecules.

New chemicals pour into the fluid circulating in the tank. As Jhata watches, the dilated pupils of the eyeballs slowly close into two tight black dots. When Ryzaard is fully awake, a thin energy field appears above the surface of the tank, necessary to keep him from attempting to use his Stones to jump away.

She goes directly into his mind. “How do you feel, Dr. Ryzaard? I’ve cleared away most of your nervous system, so pain should not be an issue.”

A wave of questions and panic rise up as he struggles to understand what is going on.

Who are you? Where am I?

“You are hanging in a solution of nutrient rich bio-fluid. I am the one you see standing before you.” She takes a step closer to the tank. “Why don’t you have a look?”

The eyeballs inside the white skull begin to scan from side to side. As the neck bends forward, they look down at his body.

Surges of fear explode out from Ryzaard’s mind. He stares up at her again, his bare eyeballs a fitting symbol of raw terror.

What have you done to me?

“You came here nearly dead and asking for help. I’ve done exactly what needed to be done.” Jhata rests her hands on her hips. “You were a mess. There wasn’t much left that was worth saving.”

The panic in Ryzaard’s mind fades. After a long moment of silence, he finally understands the gravity and helplessness of his situation. Anger floods his thoughts. His neck straightens, raising a bare skull so his eyes focus on Jhata.

You want my Stones, don’t you?

Jhata can’t suppress a laugh. “I’ve never been one to turn down the offer of more Stones.” She reaches out her hands and rests them on the side of the tank. Its soft surface moves inward, flowing past and between her fingers. “But I agree with you. You’re more valuable to me alive than dead. For now. That’s why I didn’t kill you the moment I saw you.”

What do you have in mind?

“A mutually beneficial arrangement. Along the lines of what you said when you first came.” Her fingers curl into fists, digging into the tank. “We go after the boy together. And the little girl. We destroy them and everyone close to them.”

I won’t be anyone’s slave.

“You’re in no position to argue, but I’ve decided I don’t want you as a slave. It consumes too much power to maintain the master-slave relationship with a Stone Holder. Believe me, I’ve done it before.” Jhata lets go of the tank and turns her back to Ryzaard. “Besides, my kingdom is filled with slaves. What I’m looking for is more of a business arrangement. Mutually beneficial, purely arm’s length.”

The anger recedes from Ryzaard’s mind.

Please explain.

“I’ve had a look in your mind. You want to remake your world. To bring about paradise, or at least your vision of paradise.” She turns to face him again. “I can give you a head start.”

And what do you ask in return?

“Simply what you proposed. That we work together to rid your world, and the universe, of the boy and the little girl. Isn’t that what you want as well?”

What if I refuse?

“Obviously, you’re in no position to refuse anything. I simply want you to understand what I’m going to give you. Of course, I could always just withdraw and leave you to yourself.” She looks up, allowing the composition of the fluid inside the tank to change, withdrawing the life-sustaining chemicals. Then she waits patiently for his reaction.

It comes swiftly.

Fear and panic return to Ryzaard’s mind. He is slipping away. Making a show of leaving him, she turns her back and starts to walk away.

Agreed.

She stops and turns. “Good. To effectively use your Stones and wield their power, you need your body back. I’m going to give it to you. And then some.” She returns to her prior position in front of the tank and restarts the nourishing mix that sustains Ryzaard’s brain. “Now, relax. When you wake up, you’ll be a new man. You can thank me later.”

A protest rises from his mind, but it’s quickly overcome by the new fluids absorbed into his brain, shutting down his consciousness.

Now for the fun part.