Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (14 page)

Grabbing her jax, she brushes her finger along its length.

A male voice rises out of it.

“Sakura Restaurant. Take-out or eat-in?”

“Hey, Hiroki,” Alexa says. “Thought I’d swing by for some
pescado
. Anything good on the menu?”

“Fresh
hamachi
and
toro
,” Hiroki says. “Best fish we’ve had in weeks. Got an open seat at the counter for you right now.”

“Be there in three minutes.” She opens a drawer in the desk and pulls out a purple pack of thin film squares. Stripping one off, she pulls up the back of her shirt and lays it against the small of her back, flush with the skin. She starts counting backwards from ten. When she gets to five, the rush hits like a piston shooting up her spine.

The tingling sensation of peppermint crème under the skin spreads from the base of her neck, out to the shoulders and down her torso. Tight muscles relax into pools of warm saltwater. Her bones are loosely bound together by flexible cords of wet rubber. A lacy curtain of yellow light drops down over her eyes. Sounds are dampened as if she’s enveloped in a clear liquid. The world becomes an inviting, protective womb.

Hope this works. The little girl’s pretty good, even without her Stone. Only one way to find out.

Alexa walks to the door, unaware of whether her feet are actually touching the ground or not.

When she emerges outside, the drug makes the hot night air melt against her skin like cotton candy. By the time she’s halfway to the
Sakura
, Ryzaard is a distant memory. Everyone she meets on the sidewalk is a long-lost friend. The cold chrome light posts are worthy of a warm embrace. She looks forward to seeing Matt and Jessica, even little Yarah, and catching up with her companions from an almost forgotten past.

The open door of the restaurant pulls her into its golden interior.

“Alexa.” Hiroki’s voice calls from somewhere deep inside. “Right here by the counter. Your usual spot.”

She drifts past seated patrons, letting her head bob from side to side, looking for Matt and Jessica. She can’t find them. Strange. Her glance drops down to the jax in her hand. The green line on the side means they are only a few meters away. She smiles and lets the current pull her to a seat at the counter. Seconds after landing in the high backed chair, a bright orange plate appears in front. Four pieces of glistening sushi float on its surface, slowly swaying from side to side. Another grin flows across her cheeks.

Hiroki’s voice comes again. “Just a little appetizer, on the house.”

“Can’t wait” Alexa skips the chopsticks and reaches for a piece, not bothering to dip it in the tiny pool of blue soy sauce next to the plate. The buttery taste of yellowtail spreads out in her mouth like liquid sunshine. “Black market?”

“And insanely expensive.” Hiroki smiles to reveal a row of piranha teeth finely filed to sharp points. “Flown in fresh from Discovery Bay. Antarctica’s the only fishery left where the fish don’t glow.”

“You’re the best.”

“Patched into Nirvana?” Hiroki says.

Alexa slowly looks up. “You know it. Sweet Cuban derms.”

“Best way to eat sushi.” Hiroki drops another plate down. “Here’s a little surprise. Enjoy.” The shadow starts to move away.

“Hiroki,” Alexa says. “I’m here to meet friends. Have you seen them?”

“Anyone in particular?”

“An Asian-looking guy and his wife. Long brown hair.” Another piece of heaven drops into her mouth. “And they have a little girl, dark hair, brown eyes. Probably dressed to travel. They’ve come a long way today.”

Hiroki’s face scans the clientele. “Don’t see anyone that fits the description. I’ll let you know if they walk in.”

Alexa nods and swallows, feeling the fish and rice work its way down. A deep purple mound of flesh on the plate to the right screams out at her. This time, she picks up a single chopstick to investigate. With surgical precision, she touches the tip to the gelatinous mass and pushes through the surface. A tiny appendage with four reptilian fingers reaches up and grabs the chopstick. She lifts, and a snake-like creature with two front legs emerges. Its body bends into an arc, and the tail swings wildly from side to side.

“Peruvian dragon eel. Best to swallow it alive and whole.” Hiroki looks up from the counter, a thin knife in his left hand. “Came up with it last month doing some genmod in the lab. Finally got it ready for debut tonight. Tastes like sea urchin. Your favorite, right?”

Alexa nods. “You know I love
uni
.” She dangles it in the air, tilts her head back and slips it into her mouth, feeling the tail swipe her lips and tongue as it goes down. Warm fingers tickle her stomach from the inside. “You’re a genius, Hiroki.”

A male waiter with heavy eyeliner and thin strips of white hair hanging down over his eyes stops by the counter and whispers to Hiroki in Japanese. He listens and nods. Turning his attention back to Alexa, he drops another plate down in front of her.

“Your friends are here.” He looks up, eyes narrowing. “A little different from the last time you saw them. Against the wall, just below the bluescreen. They’ve invited you to join them. Zim will guide you over if you’d like.”

Alexa turns to see a woman with neon red hair next to a man sporting a pink goatee. The little girl in a green dress gives it away. It’s them.

“I can manage on my own.” Alexa waves, picks up her plates and swims through the crowd to the wall.

Yarah scoots over, making room.

Alexa drops down and stares at Jessica and Matt across the table. A laugh starts to rise in her throat. She tries to stifle it, but it surfaces as a forced exhale.

“You look great,” Alexa whispers. “All three of you. I didn’t know you were coming to the city. You should have told me.”

“It was a spur of the moment decision.” Matt stabs a gyoza with black metallic chopsticks. “Left the mountains yesterday. Caught a ride. Here we are.” The gyoza takes a bath in a pool of red sauce and goes into his mouth. “What about you? What brought you here?”

A waiter slides bowls of miso soup in front of the four of them. “Compliments of Hiroki,” he says.

Alexa hopes the haze induced by the Cuban derm will keep Yarah away. “Same reason you came.” She brings the bowl up to her lips, sucking on the salty broth and savoring the floating chunks of pork and tofu. “Trying to figure out how to stop Ryzaard. Did you know he has new digs?”

“Thought so,” Matt says. “Five blocks from here. The building with the obsidian skin.”

Alexa nods. “That’s the one. Whole thing’s constructed of carbonized chromatophoric glass. Inside and out. Stronger than steel and the color is completely programmable.”

“Only the best for Ryzaard.” Jessica looks down at a neatly arranged row of fatty tuna slices resting on perfectly round balls of purple rice. She picks one up and pops it into her mouth. “So how are you staying under his radar while you’re here?”

“I’m not.” A quick calculation passes through the foggy mist of Alexa’s mind where a plan has come together on the way from the sushi counter to her seat. “He’s knows I’m here. I went to see him a couple of days ago.”

A waiter brings a plate piled high with caramelized salmon eggs the color of blood and drops it down in front of her, along with a clear tube that looks like a massive drinking straw. Alexa picks it up and pokes it into the center of the pile. One by one, the crimson eggs start to travel up the straw into her mouth.

Matt’s eyes flick over to Yarah.

Come on in
, thinks Alexa.
Read my mind. Nothing to hide.

“You’re still alive,” Matt says. “That can only mean one thing. You promised Ryzaard you’d deliver us to him.” He stabs another gyoza and brings it to his mouth.

Yarah’s mouth drops open.

Jessica’s hands curl into fists.

“Bingo,” Alexa says. “All true. At a time and place of my choosing.” She slurps the last of the salmon eggs off the plate and takes a long drink of miso soup. Her hands go down to the table next to Matt’s napkin, and her eyes stare back at him. “You game?”

“Bring it on,” he says. “Bring it on.”

“C
lever girl.” Ryzaard sits in front of the bluescreen, next to Jerek. “I’ll bet she knows we’re watching her. She played that scene like a Hollywood actress. Impressive, considering she was high.”

Diego stands behind them, shaking his head. “I must be stupid, but didn’t she just spill the beans and tell them the plan?”

“That’s the way it looked to me,” Jerek says.

“You’re both right,” Ryzaard says. “And wrong at the same time. Go back to the recording and take a closer look. Get ready to stop the image when I tell you.”

Jerek replays the scene in the restaurant, this time in slower motion. Near the end, Alexa picks up the cup of miso soup, brings it to her lips and drains it.

“Stop,” Ryzaard says. “Back it up two seconds and freeze the frame.”

“Done,” Jerek says. “Now what?”

“Advance it very slowly.” Bending closer to the screen, Ryzaard points at the lower right corner. “Look at Alexa’s left hand. It’s dropping under the table, reaching out for Matt’s knee. Now it makes contact. See her finger move along his leg?”

Narrowing his eyes, Diego bends forward. “I see it, but what is she doing? Looks like she’s just playing with him under the table.”

“Wrong.” Ryzaard leans back. “She wrote a message.”

Diego tips his head to the side. “What kind of message?”

“Who knows?” Ryzaard swivels his chair around to look up at him. “Whatever it takes to get him to show up.”

Jerek brushes his fingers along the surface of the bluescreen. “Let’s have a look from a different angle. I’ll tap into the restaurant’s other surveillance cameras.” His fingers work quickly on the blue surface, moving through other views of the same area. “Check this out.”

It’s a lower angle from a camera mounted on a table next to Matt and Jessica and has a clear view of their legs. Jerek plugs in a time value, and the video jumps to show Alexa’s hand moving forward and coming onto Matt’s knee.

Her fingers move as if they are writing letters.

“OK,” Diego says. “Still sounds to me like she’s playing a double agent. How can we trust her?”

“The answer to that is simple. We can’t.” Ryzaard puts his hands up behind his head and slowly yawns and stretches. “But we don’t have to. As long as we know the time and place of the meeting, we’ll be ready. Between your technology and my Stones, I’m not worried.” He looks up at Diego behind him. “Track her every move. But don’t interfere.”

“Got it.” Diego walks to the spiral staircase twenty meters away and descends below to his office.

Ryzaard turns back to the bluescreen. “Sorry for the interruption, Jerek. Where were we?”

“Talking about implants.” Jerek touches the screen. It shows a magnified view of a green jewel smaller than a fingernail and shaped like a claw, fatter at one end and curing around to a tapered point. A stylized version of the Stones. “I’ve had an entire floor of my best and brightest science monkeys working on this around the clock for a week, trying to reverse engineer it so we can understand how it works. That’s the staring place if we hope to improve it.”

Ryzaard’s chameleon-like pants and shirt shimmer metallic gray. “And the problem is?”

“We’ve taken the implant apart, carefully and meticulously, to get a look inside.” The bluescreen zooms in on pieces of the green jewel laid out on a white background. “The problem is that there’s nothing there.”

“What do you mean?”

Jerek shakes his head. “The technology that made this is far advanced beyond us. It’s more than solid state. The inside of the implant appears to be just one material. No wires. No silicon. No bio-electronics. It’s like a solid rock. Like the Stones. We’ve run every test on it we can think of, and we still get no readings.” He looks up at Ryzaard. “Where did you say you got this?”

“Off-planet,” Ryzaard says. “Some friends I found through the Stone. Not very likeable characters. I’d rather not deal with them anymore.”

Jerek shakes his head again. “It’s a real stumper. Other than your Stones, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Keep working on it,” Ryzaard says. “I’m sure you’ll have a breakthrough.”

“Maybe.” Jerek leans back and stretches. “I’ll let you know if we do.” He sighs audibly and reaches for a cup of black liquid and takes a sip. “In the meantime, it might be easier to contact your off-planet friends and ask for an upgrade.”

Ryzaard’s clothes flash crimson red. He says nothing as he stands.

“Can I ask a question?” Jerek says.

“Of course.” Ryzaard stops. “Whatever you’d like.”

“What makes you so sure we
can
mass produce implants?”

Ryzaard’s hands go into his pockets. “Because I’ve seen it.”

“Are you serious?” Jerek’s jaw drops open.

“I had a vision of it. Decades ago. Millions of Shinto’s followers coming to the shrines to get a jewel behind their ear.”

“But how?”

“I’m not worried.” Ryzaard turns to leave. “The way will open before us. Keep working. And keep everything I just told you strictly secret.” He makes his way up the spiral staircase.