Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (72 page)

Palms drop down to their sides.

Fingers open and release dozens of dead jaxes to hit the floor with wooden thuds.

After two hundred years of electronic chatter, the world is quiet.

“W
hat do we do?” Yarah says.

Matt keeps his eyes on Ryzaard, still floating a hundred meters away, just in front of the wall.

“Jump through the connection back the way we came.” Retracing the mental map that led them to this point, Matt reaches out for the exit point that will take their minds back to the planetary network.

But he can’t find it.

Sorry, my friends. That connection has been severed. The Mesh, and everything in it, including your minds, will be wiped clean.

A half-grin climbs onto Ryzaard’s face.

They say you can’t be killed. Now I finally understand. I don’t need to kill your body. It’s enough to kill your mind.

Matt and Yarah both close their eyes and try to jump away, back to the planetary network, back to the mountaintop in Colorado, anywhere to get away. But it doesn’t work.

There is no place to jump to.

So long.

Yarah’s eyes meet Matt’s, wide with meaning. “Give me your Stone. I can do it,” she says. “Trust me.”

Matt nods and hangs still in the remaining white space as the black wall looms closer. Yarah’s shadow rises up before him and comes down, engulfing him in darkness as he opens himself to her. It consumes the world, leaving him empty and alone, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to think or feel.

Y
arah takes Matt’s Stone in her hand and turns to face Ryzaard in the churning darkness of the black wall.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Ryzaard says. “I know my implant is the only way out of the Mesh.” A thick purple glow clings to his body. “But I’m sorry. You’ll never make it through—”

She doesn’t wait for him to finish. Drawing on the power of both Stones, she throws herself forward into the darkness, searching for Ryzaard’s mind. Bursts of light flash, and she slams into a transparent metallic barrier. With a Stone in each hand, she holds them like daggers and swings the tips down onto the surface with no effect as it closes around her. A circle of light appears above on the other side of the barrier and grows smaller, closing like an iris. Instinctively, she understands what it is.

Ryzaard’s mind is jumping through his implant’s connection to the planetary network. In a few seconds, the connection will close, leaving her and Matt trapped on the other side of the barrier.

With a final jab, she joins the Stones in her hands and thrusts them down.

The hard surface shatters and falls away.

In the moments before it fades to nothing, Yarah lunges upward through the pinpoint of light.

Into Ryzaard’s mind.

She opens her eyes on a black plain. Torrents of rain pour down from a dark sky. A single thin mountain range rises like a jagged razor on the other side of the valley floor.

Got to get out.

Ryzaard will be waiting for her and Matt as soon as he figures out they are in his mind. She’ll have to be ready to face him as soon as she jumps out and back to the planetary network. Looking up, Yarah takes in a deep breath, closes her eyes and moves into the jump.

A dry, scaly creature brushes past her ankle. She makes the mistake of looking down to stare at a delicate snake-like tendril that breaks through a crack in the rocky surface and carefully sniffs at her leg. Bending down to study it, she touches it with a trembling finger. It stiffens as if pointing at her. A crystal-shattering chord of music bursts from below ground. The next instant, the tentacle shoots out and wraps around her ankle.

The entire surface cracks and crumbles away to expose a giant squid-like creature with a huge black eye and hundreds of worm-like arms.

As she falls toward it, the tentacle closes tightly around her leg, and she dangles upside down in the air. A beak-like mouth opens up a few meters below her head.

With a single stroke of the Stone, Yarah cuts through the tentacle. The beast screams, shuts the great eye and sucks all its arms into a tight ball. She bounces off its side and hits the ground. The next instant, she scrambles up the sides of the hole and runs away as fast as she can sprint.

The creature crawls out onto the valley floor and darts after her, moving on a blur of tiny arms. It quickly catches up, stretches out two rubbery appendages, and wraps them around her legs just below the knees. She trips and falls as the creature hovers over her with open jaws.

As the great beak slams down, she rolls to the side. The mouth hits the dirt with a scream. Dozens of the arms tighten their grip on her small body, holding her in place like a spider might hold a fly. The jaws rise again and hover over her as the great eye stares into her face.

Concentrating on the two Stones in her hands, she manages to raise a blade of light from the tip of each one. With a flick of her wrists, the blade severs the arms wrapped around her. The creature rears back and emits a high-pitched hiss from its mouth. Yarah jumps to her feet, lunges and drives the blades through the great eye.

The squid slumps to the ground and dissolves into a pool of viscous black liquid that seeps through cracks and disappears.

Above her head, the rushing of air catches her attention. As she ducks, steel talons sink into the flesh of her back, lifting her into the air.

Through the pain, she looks up and sees a creature that resembles a bat. Beating its leathery veined wings, it skims above the valley floor toward the high range of rocky crags. When it gets close to the base of the mountains, it pulls up, following the line of the slope until it reaches the top. Then it follows the ridgeline as it makes its way to an unknown destination.

Yarah is too weak to move her arms. The pain has turned into a dull ache spreading out from her shoulders until her upper body is numb. Far below, she sees a peculiar shape that catches her eye.

A single red torii gate, the only manmade object in sight, sits atop the mountain ridge. The image of Miyazawa’s Shinto shrine in the mountains comes into her mind. She recalls his words.

Pass through the gate to the pure land beyond.

The creature drops down into a mass of slender branches and leaves. As it extracts its talons from her back, the pain overcomes her mind, and blackness covers her eyes.

She jolts awake to the sound of flapping wings.

Jumping to her feet, a black shadow begins to drop down just above her head. Without taking the time to look up, she dives over the edge of the nest and flexes her hands and feet to land.

But nothing is below her.

Just out of reach, the vertical rock face of a sheer cliff shoots by as she falls to the valley floor a thousand meters below. Above her, wings beat the air as the creature closes in.

She relaxes, feels the Stone in each hand, looks up and imagines herself leaving Ryzaard’s mind. The cliff and the bat blur together.

And then she is shooting through the maze of pathways in the core of the planetary network. Searching her mind like a map, she finds the point where she and Matt entered the maze. With the ease of a single thought, she relaxes, and jumps straight to it, letting go of Matt’s Stone.

She opens her eyes.

Ryzaard is standing over her.

“Welcome back,” he says.

W
hen a crack of light breaks through the darkness, Matt awakes as if from death with no idea how much time has passed. Multicolored tubes and filaments run along the surface of a sphere just below his feet. For an instant, he thinks he’s back home at an amusement park.

And then he remembers the planetary core. The point where he and Yarah entered the network of filaments and tendrils.

Ryzaard’s voice rains down on him. “You always get someone else to do your dirty work.”

“Where’s Yar—”

Jolts of yellow plasma tear at the thin blue membrane around Matt and send him spinning backwards. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the little girl lying beside him with the same blue light enveloping her. Burn spots pepper her skin where Ryzaard’s darts of fire have penetrated the protective shield. Relying on pure instinct, Matt bends forward, points his fists at the old man and blasts out lines of white energy, sending Ryzaard careening into the core.

Matt cradles Yarah’s burnt body in his arms. “You did good, Yarah. You got us out of there. I know it wasn’t easy.”

She stares up with half-open eyes. “He got here before I could do anything.”

Stones blazing on his chest, Ryzaard lunges back at them.

Casting a thick protective film of blue around the two of them, Matt jumps in front of Yarah and shields her with his own body. As the blast from Ryzaard pushes them back, Matt’s hand brushes against a colored tube protruding from the core of the planet. In an instant, the network’s blueprint flashes through his mind like an afterimage, and he is reminded of what Yarah said earlier about another point in the network, a point above all other points, from which Ryzaard controls it all.

He searches the image in his mind, holding off further attacks from the old man.

“It’s here.” Yarah lifts her hand and presses it against Matt’s temple.

The point stands out clearly in his mind.

“Let’s go.” His fingers wrap around Yarah’s wrist.

The air flashes white, and they float in darkness above the planet. A few feet away, a glossy globe hangs at the end of a long cable dropping down to the planet’s surface. Matt takes in the view of the planet, its surface covered with billions of floating shark heads on the end of rat tails, clamping down on billions of bodies.

Stretching out his hand, he touches the sphere.

And immediately understands.

Twenty billion minds surge through his consciousness. Twenty billion hearts beat. Twenty billion lives hang by a thread. He is one with them all.

The power to control or terminate them surges up through his palm.

“Feels good, doesn’t it.” Ryzaard flashes into place beside him. “The power is intoxicating, yet it clears the mind at the same time. And this is just one planet. There are billions more in this universe, and an infinite number of universes opening to still more without number. All this could have been yours.
Can still be yours.
If only . . .”

Matt stares at the sphere. “If only what?” His palm slides across the glassy surface.

“If you submit to me.” Ryzaard bends forward and whispers in Matt’s ear. “Believe in me. Join me. Don’t make me kill you.”

Twenty billion hearts beat. Matt can stop them with a mere thought. Twenty billion hopes and dreams. He can bend them all to his will. All of it is possible as long as he keeps his hand on the glass sphere.

Looking out beyond the shiny sphere, Matt sees the sea of bodies floating head down, each one a symbol of a mind enslaved. “MX Global killed my mother. You killed my father. Millions of others. And then Jessica.” Matt pushes away thoughts of hopelessness that threaten to overwhelm.

“All of that is true,” Ryzaard says. “But it’s meaningless compared with the power we can wield, the power for good we can exercise. The wrongs we can right. The protection we can provide. I know you feel it now. Don’t throw it all away.”