Stones (Data) (68 page)

Matt is thrown against the wall and ends up sprawled at its base. Jessica lies motionlessly beside him. Blood oozes from her face, arms and legs.

For a split second, Matt manages to look up and sees Ryzaard, his arms flailing in the air, falling backward over the dental chair that still has Naganuma pinned to the floor.

Right next to the cube.

J
ust before the blast, the lights come on in the corridor, but Kent suppresses the urge to look up.

The force of the shockwave surprises him and leaves him momentarily deaf. After a white cloud of blast residue billows down the hall and passes over his head, he looks above the backpack to the end of the hall. There’s a gaping hole where the door was, and the solid steel wall on the right bulges out more than four feet.

The round room is on the other side.

He stands up and walks forward.

The figure of a man, dressed head to foot in black, drops out of the ceiling in front of him. Kent stops and takes a step back. Two more men drop down.

There are three of them, not just one, and they have come through the open vent.

Behind him, a door slides open. He turns and catches a glimpse of a group of young people, men and women, standing at the opening, their eyes and mouths open.

A burly youth with no shirt and no shoes pushes through the others. “Who are you?” he says. Without waiting for the answer, he breaks into a run at Kent, a long wooden club tipped with spikes in his hand and a warrior yell ripping from his lips. Two other men and a Chinese girl follow behind.

Kent staggers backward, caught between the running boy and the three ninja-like figures in black. They rush forward. He grabs his backpack from the floor and, for an instant, stands in the middle of the onrushing hordes, looking from side to side. His gut tells him to run toward the three men. At least they aren’t brandishing weapons. He turns in their direction and drops into a roll, hugging his pack.

To his amazement, the three men bound over him and move to the opposite end of the corridor where the club-bearing youth is rushing forward.

There is a flash of light followed by a series of pops. He looks behind and sees that the far end of the corridor is filled with gray smoke.

“Nerve gas,” a woman yells. “Get back.”

The young man emerges from the smoke, doubled over and coughing violently before he collapses on the floor.

Kent doesn’t waste any more time watching. He runs through the open hole into Ryzaard’s office. A cool draft is blowing where the floor-to-ceiling window has been shattered. Bits of glass lay scattered on the carpet like tiny daggers. What was once a large desk is a burning pile of broken wood and splinters on the floor. The blackened remnants of a grandfather clock are heaped against a wall. White haze floats in the air.

He quickly crosses through the office to the open door on the other end and flattens himself against the wall. He can hear voices inside and takes a peek.

The room is a colossal mess.

Near the middle, a gray-haired man in the white robes of a Japanese Shinto priest is pinned under a heavy metal chair. Another man in a tweed jacket is sprawled on the ground next to him, struggling to get up, his ankles held in place by the priest. A large knife is on the carpet to the side of them.

Two bodies are against the far wall, covered with shards of broken glass and speckled with blood. Neither of them is moving. For an instant, the smoke clears so that Kent sees who they are.

Matt and Jessica.

Kent’s heart sinks. They may already be dead. He wants to run straight to them, grab them and take them out of the room. A flood of suppressed emotion wells up and rolls over him, clouding his vision, making his knees wobbly. The walls in the room seem to crowd closer together, and the floor is tilting under his feet. He drops to the floor and braces himself against the wall. His pulse is racing out of control.

He needs to think clearly. With a few deep breaths, he drives the fear and confusion from his mind.

One thing is clear. He needs a weapon, one he can use in close combat. A gun is too dangerous in such a crowded space. It could easily ricochet off the walls. The same goes for the crossbow in his pack.

And then his eyes go back to the large knife on the floor to the side of Ryzaard and the Shinto priest.

Without further thought, he bounds into the room and passes screaming faces gesticulating on the remains of a giant bluescreen on the wall to his right. Tuning everything else out, his eyes focus only on the knife. As he rushes toward it, somewhere in the chaos, a voice shouts that the auxiliary power is not stable.

He ignores it and moves on.

When he reaches the dagger, the lights go out. A low humming sound fades away, and the room falls dark.

His fingers drop down and pick up the handle.

I
n the darkness, Kent’s IR goggles automatically switch on, and once again he feels like a deep-sea diver moving in a murky world of eerie shapes. No one seems to notice that he’s in the room. He crouches low against a wall to observe the scene and decide upon a plan of attack.

The Japanese man pinned under the chair closes his eyes and goes still. One hand is gripping a glowing rock. Kent instantly recognizes that the man is doing some sort of meditation. As the man opens his eyes, his free hand grasps the bottom of the chair. With a heave, he throws it off and into the wallscreen three meters away.

A long section of the screen shatters. Sparks, broken glass and black smoke fly across the room.

The Japanese man looks exhausted and injured. With one hand supporting his lower back, he struggles to his feet while the man in the tweed jacket pulls himself up to a sitting position not far away and faces in Kent’s direction.

Squinting through his goggles, Kent recognizes the face of Mikal Ryzaard, the newly minted President and CEO of MX SciFin.

As Kent stares at the two men, he notices that each of them holds a rock in their hands, and each of them quickly moves away from a metallic cube in the center of the room.

Ryzaard grasps his rock like the handle of a knight’s sword. A blue line of intense brilliance ascends up from the rock’s tip. It forms into a long curve like a scimitar and flattens into a thin, wide blade of variable length that seems to grow or shrink at Ryzaard’s whim. For the moment, it’s two meters long.

Amazing technology
, Kent thinks.

“Do you really think you can kill me?” the Japanese man says. A blade shoots out of his own rock in the distinct shape of a samurai
katana
sword, and he lets it drop low to his side. As he teeters back and forth on his feet, his arms extend outward for added balance. Beads of sweat dance on his forehead.

Ryzaard ignores the question and lunges forward, swinging his energy blade down over the head of the Shinto priest. The priest lifts up his Stone and its blade in a twisting motion that deflects Ryzaard’s blow to the floor a split second before it would have sliced his forehead in two. A shower of glowing metal shards explode at their feet as both energy beams bite into the floor and leave long gashes.

Must be a new weapon developed by MX Global
.

Kent slides along the wall, keeping an eye on Matt and Jessica on the edge of the rug. They still haven’t moved.

Maybe they’re dead.

With that thought, a huge weight presses on Kent’s chest, squeezing the life out of his lungs. He struggles to breathe. The world around him falls away. Heat drains out of his fingers and toes, arms and legs, leaving him alone and cold.

And then Matt rolls over onto his back and opens his eyes.

Still alive!

Kent wants to rush forward and engulf his son in his arms, but holds back, not wishing to attract Ryzaard’s attention and do anything that might further endanger Matt.

Jessica is still slumped over, her long hair and arms streaked with dark blood.

Sidestepping along the floor with his heels to the wall, Kent inches closer, trying to get a better look at their faces as the other two men fight behind him with their laser-like weapons.

Jessica moves her hands and lifts an arm. She’s alive too.

When Kent gets within a few feet, nothing prepares him for the onrush of emotion as he looks into their faces. Warmth washes over him, bringing life back to his fingers and hands.

Matt and Jessica.

His heart seems to stop beating for an eternity.

When it starts again, he moves his lips, trying to speak. All that comes from his throat is a dry rasping sound. Finally he manages to force out a single word.

“Son.”

Memories of eavesdropped conversations from the office next door bombard Kent’s brain. He hears Ryzaard’s voice stating a clear intent to kill Matt. As Kent looks down at the bruises and blood on his son’s arms and legs, his hands curl into fists, and he slowly turns to see the old man in a tattered tweed jacket fighting the Shinto priest. The warmth he felt at seeing Matt turns to a fever. His face flushes with rage.

The image of his wife’s car, flattened and destroyed by a truck transport, unfolds like a deadly flower in his mind. Anger surges through his body. He feels the urge to jump to his feet and drop a MEPPs explosive down Ryzaard’s shirt and thrust the dagger into his back.

Before thoughts turn to action, Kent draws in a deep breath and calms himself. Bursts of light from the two men fighting in the darkness bring him back to the reality of Matt sitting only a couple of feet away. There isn’t much time. He pulls himself together and, with trembling hands and legs, kneels down in front of Matt, puts his hands on Matt’s face and carefully lifts Matt’s head up.

Kent stares into his son’s eyes. “Matt.” His voice is little more than a whisper. “What has Ryzaard done to you?” His eyes drop down to Matt’s ankles and wrists, lashed together with zip ties. He brings out the dagger.

Matt’s eyes open wide and then squint, but he doesn’t say anything.

Snatches of blue light dance off the blade in Kent’s hand from the fight going on at the other end of the room.

“Hold still,” Kent says. The knife slices through the zip ties with surprising ease.

The instant his wrists and ankles are free, Matt springs upon Kent like a wild jaguar, knocking him back onto the floor. In the darkness, his hands find and close around Kent’s neck.

Kent remembers that his son probably can’t see anything in the dark. “Matt,” he whispers. The fingers around his throat are tight, squeezing hard. He can barely get the words out. “It’s me. Your dad.”

Matt stops. His fingers peel away. Eyes narrowing to tiny slits, he pulls his dad’s face closer and slowly searches the forehead, nose, mouth and chin. His eyes open wide with recognition and a look of utter disbelief.

“Dad,” Matt says. “How did you…” The words catch in his throat. With strong arms, he grabs his dad’s shoulders and pulls him close.

Their foreheads meet and touch.

Hot tears run down Kent’s cheeks.

Matt’s body shakes with pulsing tremors. Kent’s arms reach up and wrap around his son in a tight embrace. His hand finds the back of his son’s head and strokes it gently through the thick hair.

Pulling Matt’s ear down to his mouth, Kent whispers. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

As if struck by a sudden thought, Matt swings around to his side, finds Jessica and lifts her upper body.

Her arms fall limply to the floor.

Matt bends close to her face. “Still breathing.” His fingers grope for a pulse on her neck. With a nod, he turns back to Kent. “She’s alive. We have to get—” Matt cuts his sentence short and stares down at the floor.

Kent follows Matt’s eyes and sees it too. The light glints off a miniature box on the floor a few feet away.

Matt lunges past his dad, reaching for it and cupping it in both hands. Kneeling down, Matt gently opens the lid, plunges his fingers in and pulls out a curved rock, just like the ones Ryzaard and the Japanese man have in their hands.

And it’s glowing neon white.