Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (24 page)

His heart beating in his ears, Matt moves forward. Lifting the tip of the rifle and pointing it at the figure on the sofa, he places his finger on the trigger.

In ten paces, Matt crosses the room and brings the gun close to Ryzaard’s forehead and stares down. The old man with the young face sleeps peacefully.

“Wake up,” Matt says.

Ryzaard remains silent and motionless.

An image of Jessica passes through Matt’s mind. Without thinking, he takes a small step forward and rams the rifle tip into Ryzaard’s forehead. Blood oozes from the wound, but still Ryzaard doesn’t move.

“Get up!” Matt yells.

Ryzaard’s eyes flip open and narrow. Confusion mixed with fear flashes across his face. His hand becomes a blur as it jumps up and grabs the rifle. The lights in the room come on.

Matt twists and pulls back hard on the gun. At the same time, he lands a hard kick on Ryzaard’s forearm.

Ryzaard winces with pain as the rifle comes free.

Taking a step backward, Matt still holds the open box in his hand. Yarah stands behind him.

Ryzaard sits up and reaches for the Stones with his other hand. The same look of bewilderment blazes through his eyes as he tries to make contact with them. He looks down at the dead black shapes on his chest, and then stares up at Matt.

Without taking his eyes off Ryzaard, Matt moves back another two paces. “Something wrong?” He hands the open cloaking box to Yarah behind him. She takes it and steps back.

“What have you done?” Ryzaard stands from the sofa, a snarl on his face.

“Where is she?” Matt points the pulse rifle at Ryzaard’s chest. His finger rests on the trigger applying light pressure.

Ryzaard studies Matt’s face. “You know what your problem is? You’re sloppy. You only care about yourself. The people around you, the ones you should be watching out for, they always die. Have you ever asked yourself why?”

“Save your breath,” Matt says. “I’ve learned a lot since the last time. It’s not going to work.”

“You’re afraid of
power
!” Ryzaard rubs the wrist that Matt kicked. A purple bruise has already formed. “Don’t you see that?”

“Just tell me where Jessica is. Then I’ll leave.”

Ryzaard’s hand goes to his chest, pressing above his sternum.

Matt sees a mostly transparent film flow across Ryzaard’s skin.

“You have a rifle,” Ryzaard says. “Why don’t you shoot me?”

Without a word, Matt lowers the point of the gun and squeezes off the trigger.

A black pulse projectile rips a large hole in Ryzaard’s pajamas. He stumbles backwards and falls on the sofa. Reaching his hand down to his leg, he opens up the pajamas where the wound should be.

The skin is flawless, unbroken.

“Upgrades.” Ryzaard smiles.

Matt pumps the rifle and takes a step forward. “Tell me where Jessica is.” He jerks the trigger back and shoots Ryzaard’s left arm.

The shell splatters into a fine mist against Ryzaard’s bicep, causing a grimace on his face.

“I mean it.” Matt clenches his jaw, pumps the rifle and sprays projectiles across Ryzaard’s chest.

The old man falls back limp on the sofa, twitching with pain.

Matt approaches. With his foot, he rolls Ryzaard down onto the floor. His other foot goes onto Ryzaard’s chest. The point of the rifle comes down and rests on his forehead.

“Tell me.”

Ryzaard closes his eyes. “You can’t kill me with bullets. You’re too smart for that, anyway. You’ll never find her if you kill me. You know that as well as I do.”

Sounds of commotion float up from the circular stairs. It sounds like dozens of heavily shod feet and guns clanking against battle armor. Muffled voices shout commands.

Matt turns to Yarah. “Stay behind me.” He turns back to look down at the floor where Ryzaard lies.

All he sees is a blur rolling to the left. With a broad sweep of his arm, Ryzaard brushes aside Matt’s legs and topples him. At the same time, he kicks the pulse rifle out of Matt’s hand.

Landing hard on his back, Matt rolls and jumps to his feet just in front of Yarah.

A smile graces Ryzaard’s face. “More upgrades.” He lunges and takes a swing at Matt, who barely manages to jump out of the way.

Ryzaard’s fist slams into the thick glass of the window. A spider web crack blooms and spreads from the point of impact.

Matt pivots on his left foot and lands a solid punch between Ryzaard’s shoulder blades, connecting with bone. It feels like hitting a steel girder.

The blow should have dropped Ryzaard to the floor, but there’s no reaction from him.

Matt bounds across the room and scoops up the pulse rifle. Yarah runs and stands behind him. Her eyes jump between him and Ryzaard.

“Get ready,” Matt says.

Yarah nods and looks down at the cloaking box in her hand.

Grabbing the Zeus statue off his desk, Ryzaard holds it up like a weapon and drops his gaze down to Yarah.

Anticipating his move, she jumps aside at the same moment he hurls it at her. It flies past her head and shatters against the wall behind her.

With hands clenched into fists, Ryzaard lunges.

Matt pumps three shells into the right side of Ryzaard’s chest. The old man stumbles backward, hits the window and slides to the floor, groaning with pain. No blood.

The sound of running feet has almost reached the top of the stairs behind them.

“Now!” Matt shouts.

He digs his hand into a side pocket and pulls out his black Stone. Then he drops to the floor into a lotus position and closes his eyes. Yarah sits beside him and holds out her left hand. Her small fingers move out from under the lid of the box.

She snaps it shut.

At the same instant, the Stone in her right hand glows white, as does Matt’s.

On Ryzaard’s chest, the necklace of seven Stones takes on a deep violet hue and becomes weightless, floating in the air like tiny balloons.

J
hata floats closer to the opening in the tube where the black sphere used to be. It’s the control node, the point from which one can oversee the entire network. Throwing her head from side to side, she sees a fragment of black glass, a remnant of material from the broken node. Catching it in her hand, she brings it close to her eyes for a careful study.

Quickly going all the way down to the subatomic level, it is unlike any material she has ever seen. It flashes in and out of existence like a wave on the ocean that suddenly appears on the surface and then crashes back down. As she draws in even closer, the material entirely vanishes. It seems to be composed of
nothing
at the most fundamental level. Much like the Lethonen themselves.

It must have been the peculiar material of the control node that had allowed them access to the planetary network.

The new control node she plans to install will be made of different material and will not afford this privilege.

She takes one last glance down at the planet with its fringe of cables and shark heads floating up from the surface like the cilia on a massive cell. After taking it all in, she jumps back to the lab.

Opening her eyes, she stares down at the green implant fragments in her hand. Now that she understands how they work, it’s time for the real work to begin.

The first task is to understand the reason for the failure of the Lethonen implant prototype. It wasn’t a flaw in the planetary network they found. It works perfectly.

She recalls what the Lethonen told her.

The implant connects the core of the slave’s mind to the floating head.

Looking down at the green fragments, Jhata recalls Ryzaard’s experiment with the implant, pulled directly from a scan of his mind.

The images play like an old video against the dark backs of her eyelids. A small fat man lies on a table. A doctor in a white lab coat performs the surgery to implant the jewel-like device. It connects to the man’s brain. His mind becomes part of the network.

So far, so good. What had gone wrong?

Jhata fast-forwards the memories lifted from Ryzaard’s mind. She sees him approach the fat man. Looking down through his eyes, she hears him call the man by name.

Little John.

And then Ryzaard places a dark Stone in Little John’s hand. His fingers grip it as it glows white.

Ryzaard tried the implant experiment on a
Stone Holder
.

Now it begins to make sense.

After a simple surgical procedure, the green implant connects to the core of the slave’s brain. The implant itself is in constant connection with the planetary network. The network controller can pull from the slave’s mind, but the slave himself cannot access the network.

Unless the slave is a Holder with a Stone, a universal connection device.

That’s why Ryzaard’s experiment ended in failure. Little John’s Stone gave him direct access back to the network. He wasn’t just a slave.

So that’s the answer. The implants work. All that remains is to do some fine-tuning, work on the connection between the implant and the Earth’s Mesh, and find a way to mass-produce them. While she’s at it, it makes sense to move the planetary network to a new location so that the Lethonen can no longer find it. Jhata doesn’t want them hanging around trying to get it back.

Then the implants will need to be tested on a human from Earth who doesn’t have a Stone.

Jhata has just the person in mind, out on the plain below the cliff.

Y
arah quickly closes her eyes and finds Matt and his Stone floating in the darkness. His mind is completely open, offering no resistance. Everything is accessible. She can go anywhere, do anything.

But there isn’t time to play. She drops down through multiple levels until she’s standing in the Core. A thin ribbon of quivering pink flesh stretches from floor to ceiling. Yarah takes care to keep herself positioned as far away from it as possible. If she were to accidentally cut the strand, Matt would instantly die.

With practiced focus, she looks down through Matt’s own eyes and sees the Stone in his hand. She is simultaneously herself and him, standing with her Stone in her right hand and his Stone in her left hand. An instant surge of power makes every part of her body sing with joy. It’s like she wields a hundred Stones.

No.
Ten thousand
.

So many things to do. With effort, Yarah resists the temptation, promising herself that she will do them later. Time is precious now. She has to act before Ryzaard wakes up, just as Matt told her.

First, she jumps out of Matt’s mind and finds Ryzaard. The presence of his seven Stones is almost overwhelming. They scream out to her for attention. She can possess them all, make them her own. It would be so easy.

No time for that.

Negotiating the entrance to his mind is harder. He hasn’t opened up to her. It’s more like he’s asleep with the doors locked. The pulse rifle shots to his chest have set off a firestorm in his nervous system. He’s awash in a maelstrom of pain and working to calm it down.

It won’t take him long.

Yarah senses Ryzaard’s focus. He can’t turn away until the pain is gone. His own survival instincts had taken over.

That was the way they planned it. Hurt Ryzaard enough to keep him fully occupied, but not enough to kill him. A dead mind will yield no information. And information is what they’ve come after.

With the power of her and Matt’s Stones, Yarah slips past Ryzaard’s defenses. It’s like running a maze for the second time. It’s doable, but it still takes effort. There aren’t any shortcuts. She darts and weaves through the obstacles. Along the way, she notices his mind is different from the last time. More organized and streamlined. For some reason, it reminds her of Jhata.

Then she breaks through and stands on a broad plain. In the far distance, she sees a jagged-toothed mountain range. It wasn’t there before. The temptation to investigate its canyons and spurs is overpowering. With effort, Yarah resists and, closing her eyes, drops down a couple of levels, scanning for any memories of Jessica.

It’s like flying through a massive room full of paintings, the kind she saw once in a museum in Rio de Janeiro. She’s looking for just one and will recognize it when she sees it. But it takes time. She has to stop and pause in front of each one before moving on. It’s difficult because there’s so much information here, so much that would be useful to her and Matt.