Stones: Hypothesis (Stones #2) Read online

  Violent shrieks rip through the night as the four figures dissolve into a churning mass of noise and formless color. Matt drops to the ground, and his throat closes off so he can’t breathe. Nausea sweeps over him again as violent voices rage in his mind, fading in and out, yelling, screaming, pleading, all speaking the same words.

  Do not speak of Them.

  Matt grips the Stone tighter in his fist and focuses on his own beating heart. He imagines himself breathing freely, and his throat slowly opens up. Struggling to his feet again, he sees the same hulking beings in a circle, towering over him. Only this time there are eight of them.

  “What do you want?” Matt says.

  In unison, their eyes fall down to the Stone in his hand, and they answer as one in a deep voice that permeates his body and tears at the fabric of his mind.

  The Power.

  Matt surveys the ring of hungry eyes. It’s clear they want his Stone. Can they take it from him?

  New fear presses in on him from all sides.

  To fight it, he goes into meditation mode, focusing on his breath, searching his mind for an image of the Woman who came to him on the hilltop in Japan. Finding it, the chaos of the Others drains away, replaced by a tangible sense of quiet that moves through him like a wave, pushing away fear and doubt and confusion. All the negative emotion drains out through his feet into the water.

  He scans the circle. His right hand comes up to chest level, his fingers opening like a flower, the Stone revealed on his palm. It glows neon white as he pours his mind into it.

  “Take it, if you can,” he says.

  In unison, the Others blur into creatures of bones and scales, jaws gaping open, claws protruding from massive hands. The smell of rotting flesh wafts around them. They lunge at Matt, eyes on the Stone. A frenzy of activity explodes as each creature fights for it, swinging arms wildly, eyes red with anger.

  But all their efforts are in vain. Though the air rushes around him, the creatures are immaterial beings. Their claws, teeth and arms pass harmlessly through both him and the Stone, leaving them untouched.

  From somewhere above him, another Voice, stronger and deeper, as the rushing of mighty waters, pierces the darkness.

  Leave us.

  In unison, the creatures look up and freeze, raw terror reflected in their faces. Their shrieks rend the air, and they fall back from Matt, disintegrating into a mist of blackness. Rings of white light shoot out of Matt’s Stone like pulses of energy, clearing away the mist and leaving him standing alone on the beach, feet still in the water.

  He gazes up.

  The Woman descends in a tube of light.

  Warmth flows down and over and through him. The water becomes as still as glass. The Woman floats down until her feet just touch the wet surface.

  He looks into her face. As she speaks to him, soft vibrations pass through his body like a heartbeat.

  We are the Allehonen. Do not fear the Others.

  Matt stares at the Woman for a long time, studying her features, detail by detail, with no sense of anxiety, awkwardness or fear. The prominent nose is flat at the top and spreads out into broad nostrils. The lips are turned up at the corners in an inviting smile, revealing a hint of white teeth beneath. Matt remembers the eyes, almond-shaped like his own but the color of glowing amber. They gaze back at him with gentle intensity. The Woman’s dark hair parts in the middle and hangs down to her shoulders, like Matt’s own. It stands out in contrast to her white robe and the thin blue light that envelops her body.

  The effect of her whole countenance is so overpowering and of such surpassing majesty, that Matt fights the compulsion to drop to his knees in humble worship.

  The Woman stretches her hand out and down to Matt’s face, drawing him forward. Her fingertips touch the surface of his eyeballs. Intense joy surges through him from the Woman’s hands. Her voice plays in his mind.

  See.

  The beach and ocean and everything around him fall away. He floats in the void of space with stars as intense pinpricks of light. Directly beneath his feet, a blue planet fills his field of view. Heat pulses on the back of his neck, and he turns to see the orange sphere of a sun in the distance. The world below him is much like earth, with land masses and oceans, large swaths of greens and browns, but the shape of the continents is unfamiliar.

  The voice of the Woman resonates in his body.

  My birth world.

  The planet pulls Matt down, and he begins falling to it, engulfed in a thin layer of blue light. Passing through the upper atmosphere, he comes out over a continent shaped like a thin crescent moon. It rises swiftly to meet him until he glides to a stop a hundred meters above a circular village on a vast plain. Smoke floats up from small cottages made of simple mud bricks. All around the village, golden fields of ripe grain intermingle with green pastures dotted with cattle.

  Matt drops into the village and walks between the homes. He sees a boy, perhaps seven years old, leaning against the wall of a house, hands covering his eyes, moving his lips. Then the child opens his eyes, drops his hands and runs to the other side of the house where a small girl is hiding behind a barrel. Squealing with delight, he runs to the girl, touches her on the shoulders and escorts her back to the front of the house in an obvious game of hide-and-seek.

  Matt walks on through the village, past small orchards of apple and peach trees. Brown-skinned women with baskets of hourglass vegetables walk past him, chattering in a foreign tongue he has never heard. A blacksmith works outside, holding a glowing piece of metal over an anvil with one hand and hammering with the other. Men whose skin matches the color of the dark earth walk through the streets leading cattle-like creatures with square wooden boxes lashed to their backs. The colorful clothing of the women and men is like something out of the medieval Ottoman Empire. The men wear loose shirts of blue or purple and baggy pants tied at the ankles. The women are dressed in silken gowns with high collars.

  A woman in a yellow sarong crosses in front of him. She is different from the others and carries a hoe balanced on one shoulder. A water bag hangs from the other shoulder. Sweat beads up on her mahogany skin as she returns from work in the fields.

  Something deeply familiar about her pulls at him. He turns and follows her, walking past a line of homes and moving down a narrow cobblestone path to a cottage smaller than the rest.

  A man with a missing leg and arm in a sling meets the woman at the open door. She puts the hoe and water bag down and moves closer to him. He reaches out with a rag and wipes the sweat from her brow. Her arms go up around his neck. He bends forward, pulls the woman closer and gives her a tender kiss.

  Matt walks forward and watches them. They don’t notice he’s there.

  A small boy runs out of the house and pulls on the man’s dusty pants. He tousles the boy’s hair. The woman bends down and kisses the boy on the cheek.

  And then Matt hears the sound of thunder, rising from somewhere behind them. The man and woman look up at the blue sky and scan the horizon. She kisses the boy one more time on the top of his head and runs a trembling finger along the face of the man. They share a long gaze, and he pulls her close.

  They kiss again.

  She turns and takes a wooden staff from the side of the house and pulls off a small leather bag hanging from a nail, slinging it over her shoulder. With the staff in hand, she turns away and walks toward the sound of approaching thunder.

  Matt follows a few paces behind. No one in the village sees him or knows that he is there.

  Men, women and children pour into the central street of the village and follow the woman. Like her husband, many have missing legs and move on crutches. Others with missing arms emerge from the dark interiors of homes. The entire village empties of people, and they all walk solemnly past the last house and stop in the empty area between the village and the fields.

  A kilometer away, a long black line surfaces on the ridge of a low hill. A cloud of dust floats up behind the line. The sound of thunder
abruptly stops.

  Matt walks to the side of the woman. His eyes zoom in on the black line. Fear tightens in his chest as he sees that it’s a horde of warriors with leathery armor and painted faces, each sitting atop a stocky horse. Strings of human skulls swing from their saddles. Long curved swords, blood-red shields and crossbows hang at their sides.

  The woman reaches into the pouch and takes out a single white Stone.

  A low sound like a foghorn breaks the silence. The black flood rushes forward and fills the air with the thunder of a thousand hooves. A high-pitched yell rises from the throats of the attacking army.

  Terror fills the air.

  Matt looks behind him. The villagers stand in a group, two hundred of them, husbands with arms around their wives and eyes that speak of resignation. Children stand behind or at the side of their parents with mouths hanging open.

  But there is no fear.

  The woman walks toward the onrushing black tide, staff in one hand and the Stone in the other, her dusty sarong flowing in the same breeze that moves through her dark hair.

  Matt stares into her face and recognizes the flat nose and wide nostrils, the full lips, the almond-shaped eyes.

  The Woman.

  The attackers are less than a hundred meters off and closing fast. A dark cloud of dust billows up just behind the front line. The ground vibrates in unison with the rhythm of horse heads dipping up and down.

  Matt reaches his hand out to touch the shoulder of the Woman, but his hand passes through her body without effect.

  She turns to look back at the villagers. Raising her staff in one hand, she brings it down in a horizontal position. The villagers kneel to the earth, clasp their hands and bow their heads.

  She nods with a smile, and turns to face the charging warriors, a look of serene calm on her face. The fingers of her right hand grip the Stone and raise it in the air. Her other hand raises the staff. Her lips move, but no sound comes from her mouth.

  The front line of horses rushes toward her, less than twenty meters away. A young warrior bears down on her. His grinning face is painted with red and black stripes. Dropping a curved sword to his side, he swings it forward in a long, arcing motion.

  Matt waits for a pulse of energy or a laser beam to explode from the Stone and level the army. He waits for the Woman to stop time and lead the people of the village away to safety.

  But nothing happens.

  As the black shadow of the warrior whips past him, Matt turns. The blade of the long sword catches the Woman under the chin and lifts off her head as it moves forward with clean, unbroken motion. Blood spurts from the stump on her shoulders, and the body falls backward onto the dirt where it is trodden upon by horse hooves and left broken and crumpled. The Stone rolls silently on the ground out of the Woman’s dead hand.

  The last of the warriors surges past Matt and overrun the villagers, still kneeling with bowed heads. Without mercy, the swords and pikes jump and flail in the hands of the black army. A child runs screaming in Matt’s direction, and an expert marksman twists in his saddle and brings the small form down with a shot from a crossbow. In the space of two minutes, every man, woman and child lies slaughtered on the bloody ground.

  One of the warriors with a single red feather pointing up from his helmet shouts unintelligible words. The main body of the army dismounts and moves into the village.

  The warrior with the red feather turns his horse and trots back toward Matt, still standing only a few meters from the fallen body of the woman with the Stone. The warrior searches the ground with his eyes, smiles and drops down off his saddle. Reaching down, he picks up the Stone with a gloved hand and holds it out before his eyes as if appraising its value. He stuffs it into a leather bag dangling from his neck.

  Matt takes a step forward as if to protest. Then the whole scene vanishes. He’s back on the beach.

  The Woman pulls her fingers back from Matt’s eyes, looks at him for an instant and is gone, leaving Matt standing alone. The water of the incoming tide laps around his knees.

  The gentle sound of footfalls moves across the sand behind him. He turns to see Jessica standing on the beach with wide eyes and a look of wonder on her face.

  “Who was that?” she says.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I really don’t have time to join your freedom camp.” Kent follows behind Little John. “I need to find my son.”

  “It’s time we had a frank talk.” Little John walks down the road that divides one cornfield from another, hands behind his back.

  Kent strolls at his side, towering over him. “A frank talk? Sure. It’s the least I can do for the man who saved my life. You answer my questions. I’ll answer yours.”

  Little John stops and looks up. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Pardon me?”

  Little John’s face blooms red. “I said, who the hell are you?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Right now, I’m the one asking questions. So answer it.”

  Kent clears his throat and lifts his eyebrows. “Like I said, my given name is Kent Tiberius Newmark. I go by Kent. Honest. No lies.”

  “Do you have any idea how many Kent Newmarks there are in the world?”

  “Quite a few, I suppose.” Kent gets a sheepish look on his face. “It’s not my fault my parents gave me such a common name.”

  “Look,” Little John says. “You show up out of the blue, drive into New York City in a rusty old pickup truck with a load of military-grade spy equipment and duct tape, and then you start snooping on the world’s most powerful corporation.”

  “Right.” Kent swats at a fly buzzing his face.

  “The next thing we know, you’ve shut down their entire security apparatus, blasted their generators to bits and you’re making your way up some secret elevator shaft to go after the newly appointed President and CEO of MX SciFin.”

  “Right again,” Kent says.

  “And then we find out your son and his girlfriend are already there, being held as prisoners by Ryzaard himself.”

  “Bingo.” Kent nods and raises he eyebrows. “What’s your point?”

  Little John reaches up, gently putting his hand on Kent’s shoulder, and pulls him down. “And last of all,” he says as his voice drops to a whisper, “your son and his girlfriend vanish from the room. Poof, they’re gone, like magic.”

  “Are you sure about that last part?” Kent uses his best deadpan voice. “I mean, I don’t really believe in magic.”

  “Am I sure?” Little John releases his grip on Kent and looks up into his face, his voice slowly rising to a crescendo. “Of course I’m sure. It’s all in the video, every last detail.” He reaches into the side pocket of his pants and pulls out a piece of clear plastic the shape of a dice and holds it between his thumb and index finger.

  Kent grins. “You and your people have a boatload of hi-tech gadgets for being so against technology. Abomination, I mean.”

  Little John drops the cube back in his pocket and starts walking again, his hands curling into fists. “Which brings us back to my original question. Who the hell are you? And I don’t mean your name.”

  Kent catches up, hands behind his back. “I want to answer your questions, to tell you everything about me. Really, I do. But it’s a matter of trust, and I’ve learned not to trust anyone. I can’t afford to trust anyone. Especially someone I don’t know. Besides, I’m in a hurry to find my son.”

  Little John uncurls a fist. “I understand trust, and I think you and I need more of it. For each other. So let me start. Come with me.”

  They walk in silence down the dirt road until it ends in an open field with a dozen tents. Little John motions to one in the middle, and Kent walks through the open door. Little John pulls the flap shut as he enters.

  “Sit down,” Little John says. “This may take a while.”

  “I don’t have a while. Like I said, I need to get on the move to find my son.”

  “And j
ust where do you intend to go to find him? Any idea where he went when he vanished?”

  “Not really.”

  “Neither do I.” Little John pulls the cube from his pocket and drops it into a device the size of a shoebox with a bluescreen on the side. “So let’s start with what we know and see where it leads us. Now watch closely.”

  The bluescreen turns black. They hear the sound of heavy breathing. Suddenly, a burst of light illuminates a long, square passageway with a ladder running up a side.

  Kent immediately recognizes it. “The elevator shaft,” he says. “One of your boys is following me and filming the action with that mini-cam glued to his forehead.”

  Little John nods. “You know the rest. Let’s skip to the end.” He touches a finger to the device, and images play across the screen in a quick, jerky fashion. Kent sees the men dressed in black, the long stainless steel corridor, Ryzaard’s office, and finally the round room where Matt and Jessica were being held.

  “Here we are,” Little John says.

  Kent puts his face closer to the screen and watches the choppy footage. He remembers it all. Ryzaard was inches away from cutting Matt down with his laser sword. Kent threw the old dagger he picked up off the floor. It caught Ryzaard in the chest and knocked him down. Matt went to Jessica and cradled her in his arms. Then Matt looked back and spoke the words that Kent still can’t get out of his head.

  I’ll see you soon, Dad. Don’t worry about me.

  Little John’s finger touches the side of the bluescreen. The image of Matt kneeling next to Jessica is frozen on the screen. “Right here,” he says. “Look carefully at your son’s left hand. What do you see?”

  Kent’s eyes narrow, and he moves closer to the bluescreen. “It looks like he has something in his hand. A rock. Must have picked it up in Japan.”

  “Notice the distinctive shape? I’ll zoom in for a better look.” Little John touches the unit again. The image zooms in on Matt’s hand. It’s clearly visible.

  “It’s definitely a rock of some kind. The shape is oddly familiar. From a trip to a museum.” Kent looks up and scratches his head, rolling his eyes from side to side, trying to remember. “Yes, that’s it,” he says. “It looks like an old fossilized T-Rex claw. Large at one end and curving into a point at the other end.”