Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (63 page)

M
att sprints after Miyazawa and tackles him just before the priest reaches the pilot’s chair. “Help me, Yarah!” They struggle together on the transparent floor.

Jessica runs into the main room. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the implant.” Matt holds onto the Miyazawa’s legs as he fights to get free. “Ryzaard’s taken over his mind.”

Miyazawa manages to turn over so he is facing the ceiling. “Ship!” he yells. “Prepare to—”

“Don’t let him talk!” Matt claws at Miyazawa’s face. “He’ll crash the ship.” Matt’s hand finds Miyazawa’s mouth, forces his fingers between the lips and tries to pull the jaw down so it can’t move.

Turning to the wall, Jessica grabs her pulse rifle and points the barrel squarely down at Miyazawa’s eyes.

Staring up, Miyazawa laughs with Matt’s hand in his mouth. He bites down on the fingers, gets his own hands under Matt and throws him off. Then the priest jumps up, turns and sinks into the pilot’s seat.

“Ship.” Miyazawa touches the bluescreen on the com. “Go to full manual override of all onboard systems.”

“Voiceprint confirmed.” The woman’s soothing voice casts a chill over the transport. “Standing by for instructions.”

Matt rips off his shirt, lunges at Miyazawa from behind and puts the cloth between Miyazawa’s teeth, pulling hard.

The priest’s head snaps back against the headrest.

“How can I help?” Yarah stands on trembling legs behind Matt.

Still pulling on the shirt with both hands, he turns to her. “Ryzaard’s using the implant to control him. We have to get it off.”

Miyazawa’s arms and legs flail in the cockpit seat. For an instant, his body goes limp, and then he reaches up to his mouth, works his fingers under the rag and pulls it away onto his chin.

“Execute
kuchinuki
maneuver.” Miyazawa yells.

Matt jerks the rag down over the priest’s chin and onto his throat. “Cancel operation!” He pulls the rag back, cutting off Miyazawa’s air supply.

“Conflicting orders invalid.” The woman’s voice is clipped and cold. “Executing maneuver.”

The nose of the ship leans forward and accelerates straight down into a corkscrew dive.

On the ship’s bluescreen, the words
Terminate Manual Override—Touch Here
scream out at them in large red block letters.

As the priest’s body sinks deep into the cockpit chair from the acceleration, Matt, Jessica and Yarah are thrown across the open room and pinned against the large glass panel at the back. A sickening crunch echoes in Matt’s head as it makes contact. Seconds later, a ringing in his ears pushes the world away. Nausea floods his gut. Inky blackness spreads out behind his eyes. The soothing tones of the ship’s voice filter down through his consciousness like water dripping from a broken faucet in an empty room.

“Terminal impact in ten seconds.”

He tries to reach out to his Stone, but it’s cold and distant.

Next to him, Jessica moves. The barrel of her pulse rifle scrapes against his head. Her elbows gouge him in the ribs just as he hears the crisp sound of the gun pumping. A second later, its discharge makes a distant pop. His next sensation is of crashing to the floor. Then a confusion of loud voices and six more pops of the gun.

He wakes in a haze to Miyazawa’s screaming.

The ship hovers twenty feet from the ocean surface. The priest lies on the floor, his arms and legs motionless but the rest of his body squirming like a headless snake. Blood soaks through neat red holes in his white pajamas above the kneecaps, the biceps and the shoulders. A gag is tied between his teeth and around the back of his head.

“What happened?” Matt rubs his eyes and focuses on Jessica’s face.

“I terminated the manual override.” Jessica points at the bluescreen with the barrel of the pulse rifle. A neat hole pierces its glass surface where the words had appeared just moments ago. “Then I disabled Mr. Ryzaard/Miyazawa.”

The priest turns his head and stares at Matt with dilated eyes, mumbling unintelligible gibberish.

“What did he say?” Matt looks at Yarah.

“I think it was
I know where you are
.”

“Not for long.” Matt grabs the priest by the ankles and drags him into the adjoining room next to the bed. He looks up at Jessica. “Help me get him onto the bed.”

Jessica picks up his wrists while Matt lifts his legs. The priest twists wildly, but they manage to get him on the bed. Matt flips Miyazawa over onto his stomach. Grabbing some rope, he pulls the arms back and ties them at the wrist. Then he lashes the legs together at the ankles, knees and thighs as the priest screams in agony. They turn him back over. Jessica bends down, rips open his shirt and slaps three fresh derms onto the priest’s chest.

“Now what?” she says.

“Stop the bleeding.” Matt bends down and touches the skin behind Miyazawa’s right ear. “I’m going to remove the implant.”

“Is that really possible?”

Miyazawa roars and shakes his head.

“I don’t know. But we have to try.”

Matt motions to Yarah to come closer and kneels to her level. “Ryzaard may try to kill Miyazawa. Your job is to keep him alive.”

She nods and stands on the left side of the priest with her hands on his neck.

The priest’s body goes into convulsions.

“His heart has stopped.” Jessica stares up at a flat line on the bluescreen. “Blood pressure is plummeting. Oxygen levels are dropping. Vitals are shutting down.”

“No!” Yarah closes her eyes and presses her palms harder against the priest’s neck. “Give him back to me!” She grits her teeth. Her whole body goes rigid with straining muscles.

The blue screen beeps.

“Heart is beating, barely,” Jessica says.

Matt looks down at Yarah. “Good girl. Keep it up. I’m going after the implant.” He takes a deep inhale and touches the tip of his fingers to the blue jewel. Reaching out for his Stone, he finds it, and relaxes into its power. It immediately pulls him into the world behind his eyes.

Yarah hovers there, suspended in dark space, over the body of Miyazawa, her palms on his chest and a look of pain on her face. “I can feel Ryzaard,” she says. “Like a constant pressure. He’s pushing back, trying to kill Miyazawa. If I let go, he’ll die.”

The implant glows like a neon bear claw just behind Miyazawa’s ear. Matt moves closer and presses his fingers against it, feels a sharp pain, and draws back, not sure whether it’s burning hot or icy cold.

“Ryzaard knows what you’re trying to do. I can feel his anger.” Yarah looks up and swallows. “He’s pushing so hard. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold on.”

“Just a few more seconds.” Matt says. “It shouldn’t take much to get this out.” He stares at the implant and tries to drop down into its center. Nothing happens. He tries again with the same result. There isn’t time to keep trying, so he drops down into Miyazawa’s flesh a few millimeters away from the implant and looks up at it from below.

What Matt sees surprises him.

It’s like a spider with a large central mass and thousands of long, thin legs spreading out into delicate tendrils, entwining around nerve tissue into the brain and down the spine. As he stares at it, he sees it gradually growing and extending its reach like filaments of black cancer.

He studies one of the branches. It’s composed of the same dark material as the implant itself. He tries to move it, but touching any part of it, no matter how small, results in the same jolts of pain. Floating above one of the tendrils, he follows it along its full length into the center of Miyazawa’s brain. As he reaches the end, its fragile structure is only a few molecules thick. Along the way, it’s become one with the neural network of cells in the brain.

“I can’t hold it much longer.” Yarah’s voice floats down from above through layers of tissue.

Gripping the Stone in one hand, Matt selects a small area and creates a thin energy field around the implant material, hoping to find a way to separate it. When he pulls it away, the surrounding tissue collapses into disorganized pulp.

Matt tries it again and again.

Jarred out of his panic by the sound of Yarah’s screaming voice, Matt pulls back out of Miyazawa’s body into floating space next to the little girl.

She looks up in pain. “I can’t stop it. Ryzaard is going to kill him.”

“Yarah, pull back.” Matt slowly raises her hands off the priest. “It’s my turn. You need to rest.” As his hands drop down onto Miyazawa’s chest, he sees blackness around the heart, like a cloud, and tries to push it away. But the blackness stands like a concrete wall that refuses to budge.

A faint laughing sound echoes behind him. “Now, when you need it most, do you understand the meaning of power?”

Yarah appears on the other side of the priest’s body, panic in her voice. “Attack ships. Everywhere.”

Matt’s eyes go to Miyazawa, still floating in a peaceful horizontal position in the darkness of deep space. “I am sorry, friend.” Nodding to Yarah, he releases his hold on the Stone and shoots to the surface, where he finds himself still sitting in a lotus position breathing hard.

Thump, thump, thump.

Jumping to his feet, Matt glances at the bluescreen on the wall above Miyazawa’s bed where a thick flat line appears at the top of a string of vital signs. “Yarah, take a look at the implant. See if you can figure out how to remove it.”

She nods and drops her face to the priest.

“Where are the attack ships?” Matt turns to Jessica.

“Take a look.” Jessica has a white knuckle grip on her pulse rifle.

Matt walks out of the Miyazawa’s room into the center of the open cabin and scans the sky with his eyes, quickly counting ten wasp-like silhouettes. Others are coming into view. Flashes of light break from the black shapes. Half a second later, the transport is rocked by columns of foaming white water rising up from the ocean surface just a few meters below them.

“Better do something quick,” Jessica says. “They’re shooting at us.”

“Don’t worry.” Matt spreads out his arms. A sphere of pink light envelopes the transport. Explosions of light break meters away as missiles impact against the bubble’s outer skin. “Hopefully, that will hold them for a few minutes. Let’s figure out what to do with Miyazawa.”

He walks back to the priest’s room. Tubes and lines are connected to Miyazawa’s arms and legs. An oval ventilator mask has dropped down and sealed against his entire face. His chest rises up and down at regular intervals. Blood flows in and out of an external device made of flexible clear plastic the size of a small watermelon.

They stare at the bluescreen and see the large words running across the top.

Life support system engaged.

Jessica bends down and lays a finger against Miyazawa’s neck. “No pulse. The ship must be keeping him alive.”

“You can’t get the implant out, can you?” Yarah drapes her arms around Matt’s waist.

Matt shakes his head. “Not without killing him.”

“Neither can I,” Yarah says. “It’s become part of him.”

Matt drops into a chair, sweat dripping, and takes a deep breath. “We’ll just have to leave it in, for now.”

He glances out the window. More combat ships hover around the white transport, each emptying its arsenal into the sides of the bubble around them. Ripples rip across its face, but it holds without weakening.

Matt looks up. “The question is, what do we do now? It would be easy to kill the soldiers on those combat ships, but I won’t do it. And Ryzaard knows it.” His eyes drift around the interior of the transport, past Jessica and Yarah. “Any ideas?”

“As long as he can track us, he won’t leave us alone.” Jessica sits in a chair beside Matt. “He’ll follow us wherever we go, kill anyone we talk to. We need to be invisible, untraceable.”

With explosions raging around them, Matt stares down through the transparent floor at the ocean. “We need a sphere around the transport that allows light to pass through it without distortion or refraction. Then we will be invisible.”

Jessica points at Miyazawa. “What about his implant? Ryzaard might be able to track our position through it. Maybe we can figure out how to shut it down.”

“Or cut it off from Ryzaard and the web.” Matt jumps to his feet. “That’s the answer. If we can’t extract the implant, maybe we can cut Ryzaard off from it.”

“How?” Yarah says.

“First things first.” Matt says. “Let’s make the ship so no one can see it.” He motions for Yarah to follow him and walks into the room next door with his Stone in his hand. “Look up at the sun. I want you to stare at it until you see the photons”

They both stare through the ceiling of the transport.

Yarah squints her eyes. “What are
photons
?”

“A fancy word for tiny pieces of light. They come from the sun, hit objects and bounce off into our eyes. That’s how we see.” Matt’s eyes narrow to slits. “If you stare long enough, you’ll see them.”

The explosions from dozens of buzzing combat ships are getting in the way.

“I’m guessing that combat troops assigned to ocean duty are equipped with water safety gear.” Matt closes his eyes and concentrates on the sphere around the transport. A flat disk of blue light bursts from its surface and expands outward in a perfect circle. As it passes through the attack ships, their metal hulls disintegrate into ash, and the human inhabitants drop into the water. Yellow flotation tubes grow around them. “Just as I thought. Let’s get out of here before the next wave arrives.”

The ocean disappears in a blur beneath them as white light fills the interior of the transport. When the light clears away, they are hovering thousands of meters in the air over a rectangular island.

“You jumped us to the Galapagos?” Jessica says.

Matt shakes his head. “That was our original heading, but I thought it’d be wise to switch. This is Pitcairn Island. The nearest major land mass is 5,000 kilometers away. It should give us at least a few minutes without any distractions from Ryzaard.” He turns back to Yarah. “Keep looking for photons.”

They both look up through the ceiling of the transport at the sun.

“No matter how much I stare, all is see is a big ball of fire,” Yarah says. “With little hairs flying off it.”