Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (73 page)

With an act of will, Matt’s hand lifts off the glass. All of the minds fall away, out of his grasp.

He floats back from the old man, making sure Yarah is behind him. “I refuse.”

Ryzaard moves forward and slaps his palm down on the sphere. “These are the last words I will ever speak to you. The last words anyone will speak to you, living or dead. I have been more than patient, more than willing to share all that I have achieved. You have done nothing but cause me grief. Your selfishness astounds me.” His other hand comes down on the sphere. “I can take my Stones, my implants, this entire network and use it on other worlds. I can replicate it over and over through this universe and all the others. The twenty billion human lives on Earth mean nothing to me. If you refuse my offer again, I will wipe them out. Stop their hearts with a single thought. You felt the power. You know I can do it. You know I
will
do it. The choice is yours.”

“Why?” Matt shakes his head with glistening eyes.

“Because I can.” Ryzaard looks down and smiles. “Now try to stop me. Either that or join me. Submit to me. For all eternity. There is no other way.” He takes his hands off the sphere and opens his arms wide.

Yarah
, Matt thinks
. I have to do this. Forgive me if I fail.

With the Stone in his right hand, Matt stares into Ryzaard’s eyes, and then looks down at the sphere. He moves closer, his palm floating inches over its surface.

Ryzaard nods and smiles.

Taking a long inhale, Matt twists and brings the tip of his Stone down on the sphere’s hard surface with both hands.

In the microsecond before impact, a thin buzz of energy envelopes the sphere. The tip never touches its surface. Instead, an explosive, repelling force throws his hands back.

Matt tries again as Ryzaard waits with arms folded over the Stones on his chest.

The sphere remains unscathed, untouched.

Help me, Yarah.

Opening to her, he closes his eyes and finds her in the dark sub-world behind his lids. She nods and opens her palms. As he moves forward to take her Stone, a transparent wall slams down between the two of them. He presses against it and runs his fingers along its surface, like smooth cold glass.

They both hear a voice behind him.

“No cheating this time.” Ryzaard appears in the darkness. “You’re on your own.” He pulls a Stone from his chest and points it at Yarah.

She has just enough time to throw up a protective bubble before a thick beam of blue plasma pushes her off into the distance. All Matt can see is the vague dot of her spinning away.

He opens his eyes and faces Ryzaard with the sphere between them.

Anger boils in his gut, spreading out, threatening to take over. With effort and careful breathing, he pushes it back and focuses on his white Stone.

“Use it,” Ryzaard says.

Matt digs down for the power. Then he lunges and wraps his hands around the thick neck. His arms and fingers glow white as he tries to strangle the life out of Ryzaard.

The old man stands with his hands at his side, the faint smile never leaving his face. “Is this all you have to offer?” He calmly grabs Matt’s wrists and pulls them off his neck, pushing him away to the other side of the sphere. “You leave me with no choice.” He drops his palms onto the sphere beneath the white Stones on his chest. “It’s over, my friend. All of them are going to die. Because of you. I’ll start over somewhere else.”

“No.” Matt puts his own hands on the glass sphere. In an instant, he feels the blood surging through billions of hearts. A cascade of color and sensation pours over him as sees out of their eyes and takes in the villages and cities where they live, the faces of the ones they love, the moon and stars under which they sleep. Memories without number flood his mind, an endless string of images, tastes and smells. Cool dew under the toes of a child running down a hill of grass in New Zealand. The first grapes of the fall crop eaten by an old man in southern France. An Inuit mother on the northern coast of Baffin Island staring at a sunset and holding her infant close to her bare skin under the heavy fur of a polar bear parka. A young couple in love driving a coastal highway in a bright red convertible. A mother and father in China weeping over the body of their son killed in a mountain slide. An old woman in a tiny house in Albania staring into the eyes of her husband of seventy years as he takes his last breath.

It flows through his mind, a torrent of hopes and dreams, sorrow and suffering. In the short space of a nanosecond, he lives billions of lives, becomes one with them.

You’ve seen them. Good. Now watch as all of it is wiped away.

Matt shakes his head. “No.” His mind enters the glass sphere and shoots into the network. “You will not touch them.”

You think you can save them?

Giving no answer, Matt’s mind hangs inside the network, waiting for the surge of death to flow out from Ryzaard.

D
rifting in the dark, Yarah manages to stop spinning. The violent battles inside and outside Ryzaard’s mind have left her drained of energy and emotion. Two hundred meters away, she makes out Matt and Ryzaard floating on opposite sides of the glossy sphere, both of them with their hands flat against its surface. The mumbled tones of their conversation play in a far corner of her mind.

Matt may not last much longer. She must get to him.

Throwing her head back, she can’t suppress the words that rise from her mind and broadcast themselves out into space in a surge of energy.

I can’t do this alone! Someone help me!

Moving to return to Ryzaard and Matt, Yarah hears hundreds of whispers hissing behind her. She turns to see a flowing mass of gray and black, barely visible against the starlight. It moves closer and begins to form arms, legs, a trunk and a head.

“Who are you?” she says.

The shape resolves into a roughly human form.

We are the Jhata.

“Jhata?” Yarah hears the voice inside her head and squints at the mass as it becomes a woman. “What are you doing?”

We will help you. We want the power.

Yarah looks back over her shoulder. “Ryzaard took all of your Stones after he killed you. He’s using them to destroy our world.”

We can help you get the power.

Bones swim just beneath the surface of the woman’s uneven face. The eyes dart between Yarah’s Stone and Ryzaard in the distance.

“How can you help me?” Yarah says.

Kill him.

“That’s impossible.” Yarah backs away as the woman’s stray hand reaches out to touch her Stone. “He’s too powerful.”

The woman’s body begins to degrade into writhing snakes. Her skin takes on a metallic sheen as a thousand voices murmur in argument. The face grimaces in pain, and then the jaw comes together in a tight clench. Slowly, the snakes dissolve, and the body becomes that of a woman again.

We know the Way.

As Yarah stares, the face of the woman remains the same, but the body turns once again into a churning jumble of a hundred shades of gray. Its eyes flash in anger, and there are cries and shouts of terror within the mass.

It begins to transform.

Two round pillars of steel flow down from it. Above them, two horizontal crossbeams stretch out. The bottom one is perfectly straight, and the top one curls up slightly at the edges.

For just a moment, they glow bright red.

It’s the Shinto torii gate Yarah saw in Ryzaard’s mind.

The shape disintegrates back into a black formless mass. The eyes and mouth of the woman appear in its center.

Find the kill switch.

Screams pierce the darkness as a long, crab-like arm with claws on the end moves out of the boiling cloud of black to the Stone in Yarah’s hand.

She jumps away, turns, and starts back to Matt and Ryzaard.

M
att’ mind circles the network at millions of cycles per second, waiting for the blow, not sure if, when or how it will come, standing between Ryzaard and the rest of the human race.

When it finally comes, it surprises him.

At first it’s just a trickle, like a delicate feeler making its way through a single thread of the network. Matt stands in its path, pushes back and destroys it. There are more feeble attempts to bypass him, all easily blocked and neutralized. By the time Matt realizes what Ryzaard is doing, it’s almost too late.

A surge of power flows through the network, simultaneously filling the innumerable pathways and circuits of the planet’s solid state core. He tries to hold it back, but it drives him to the center where it attacks him from every side with slowly increasing intensity. As the pressure builds up, it begins to rip and tear at his mind.

The Stone burns white hot in his hand.

Reaching out for strength, he imagines the face of his mother. And then Jessica. The flow begins to reverse back to Ryzaard. He hears a voice.

Just testing, Matt. One Stone. That is all I am using. Are you ready? Here are the other forty-eight.

A tidal wave of agony crashes down through the network and engulfs him. Matt tries to stand against it, but it steadily pushes him back, eating away at him, bringing pain to every corner of his mind.

You’ve tried so hard, Matt. You’ve done more than anyone expected. You’ve shown your love and devotion, your commitment to a cause. There’s no more you can do.

As Ryzaard’s voice rains down on him, grief and despair fill in all the open spaces in his consciousness. He pushes back, but in pushing, feels nothing but weakness. The white heat of the Stone begins to overflow out of his hand, up his arm and through his chest.

The pressure forces his body into a spread eagle, arms outstretched, legs dangling below.

Still, he holds on.

These people don’t deserve to be saved. Let nature take its course. Step aside. I promise you relief and rest. An end to suffering. That’s what you need. That’s what you want. It’s your right.

He sees their faces, billions of them wearing the blue jewel.

And then he is aware that they see him as well.

The battle between Matt and Ryzaard is playing out in their minds in real time through their implants. The crushing weight of their fear and hope presses down on Matt as humankind cries out for him to save them.

Let go, Matt. They don’t understand what you’ve already done for them. All that you’ve sacrificed. You’re so much better than them. They aren’t worth saving. Don’t even try.

The intensity of the force eats away at his mind, wearing it down, layer by layer, molecule by molecule. Chewing, grinding, pushing, cutting.

You can’t take much more of this. It will destroy you. You still have time to jump away and save Jessica. She doesn’t have to die. You can find her and bring her back. The whole Earth will be yours. Just the two of you. A fresh start.

For an instant, Matt falters. Jessica’s image floats into his mind. He hears a voice.

If you love her, then save her. Let go of all the rest.

The intense energy flowing from Ryzaard’s Stones starts to push Matt back. It’s only seconds from breaking through and destroying all the minds connected to the network. There’s still time for him to jump away. Maybe he can save Yarah. Together, they can find Jessica. Bring her back.

They can be a family. They can find the Allehonen and live with them in peace. Leave the Earth and all its problems to Ryzaard. It’s too hard to save them all.

Ryzaard is right. They don’t deserve it.

Yes, Matt. You see clearly now. Let go. Find Jessica. Run away. Rest.

A new wave of energy bursts through the network eating away at Matt’s mind, chipping away at his defenses, searching for an opening.

His own voice pierces the chaos.

No.

Matt lets go of the image of Jessica and feels it slip away.

Turning his mind to the people of the earth, he reaches out to them. Waves of love swell and explode. He draws on their power and begins to ride them upstream against the tide, moving closer to Ryzaard.