Stones: Experiment (Stones #3) (39 page)

The radiated heat of the explosion hits Jessica seconds before the shock wave throws her back into Eva, knocking them both to the ground. The charred remains of the old man fall out of the sky and bounce off the snow.

Turning inside upon itself and floating up, the fireball hangs in the sky, lighting up the ground.

In the space of two minutes, the village has been completely obliterated, replaced by three open pits, scattered small fires and a couple of collapsed and shredded homes. Under the dark night sky, it looks like the crash scene of a lone spaceship that slammed into the dark side of the moon, disintegrating and exploding on impact.

Except for one detail. A sole house stands intact on the edge of the village.

Aanak’s
house.

Jessica looks up from the snow. Eva lies unconscious a meter away, her furs in flames from the heat of the shockwave. Jessica pats out the flames on Eva’s furs and tries to wake her, but she only moans with half-open eyes, struggling to form words.

Jessica drops her ear to Eva’s mouth.

“It happened so quickly,” Eva says. “Leave me, and get to the caves.”

Jessica shakes her head. “No. We stay together.” She scans the remains of the village. “Nothing is left.”

The three attack-helis move closer.

Looking for a place to hide, Jessica spies a large piece of metal siding lying on the snow a few meters away. Leaving Eva, Jessica crawls to the siding and lifts up one edge, discovering a shallow hole. She props up the siding with a charred piece of wood, and then rushes back to Eva, grabbing her coat, dragging her over the snow, pushing her into the hole and slipping inside after her.

Another whizzing sound like the buzzing of a mosquito flies across the sky above them.

A deafening concussion, followed by a shockwave, rips the metal siding up and off Eva and Jessica. A wall of fire surges over their heads. Something hard falls out of the dark sky and lands on the snow beside Jessica. She reaches out and picks up a fragment of the blackened lower jaw of a beluga whale, the same one mounted on the wall in Aanak’s cabin.

Aanak must have died in the fireball.

Throwing her head back and staring up at the stars, Jessica lets out a primal scream from deep inside.

She raises her head above ground level and looks in the direction of Aanak’s cabin. Her eyes open wide.

The attack-helis float directly over the spot where the old woman’s house had stood only a minute ago. Long cylinders of blue light illuminate the scene below, rotors whipping up floating debris into swarms of black particles, remnants of Aanak’s life and home.

Jessica sees the old woman.

Aanak stands alone on the ice a few feet from the empty spot that marked the front door of her house, holding a brilliant Stone in both hands. She wears a robe of white fur and looks younger and more erect than just a few minutes ago. A thin layer of pink light forms a protective sphere above her body.

“She’s alive.” Jessica yells to Eva, barely audible over the roar of the heli-transports.

Throwing down the whale jaw, Jessica reaches to her side and lifts Eva so she can see over the edge of the hole. Her eyes grow as wide as Jessica’s when she sees the Stone in Aanak’s hands.

Fifty meters up in the night sky, the heli-transports hover like vultures. A missile flares out from one of them and drops. When it makes contact with the bubble protecting Aanak, it flashes brilliantly for a split second, but the force of its explosive power is muffled and absorbed into the bubble, leaving only ripples on its surface.

The remains of the missile crumble to the ground.

As if on signal, each of the three heli-transports rains down a hellfire barrage of missiles, pulse projectiles and blue laser bolts upon Aanak, lighting up the night sky, but the weapons break harmlessly against the energy field enveloping her. The bombardment goes on for a long interval without any effect. The ground is littered with the twisted and charred remains of wasted ammunition.

And then it suddenly stops.

“Incredible,” Eva says. “I never knew.”

The lights from one of the hovering aircraft shifts, crisscrossing the village on a methodical grid search. Another aircraft moves away in a circular pattern above the outskirts of the village. The third transport remains in place, directly over the old woman.

Aanak looks to her right and sees Eva and Jessica, causing a reaction of horror on the face of the old woman. She turns and starts walking to them, waving her hands as the spotlight traces her every movement.

An orange flash from the ship lights up the sky, followed by the whizzing sound of a missile launch. As Jessica looks up, a streak of fire shoots down on her and Eva.

Aanak’s Stone is already raised like a pistol in her hand. A ball of blue energy breaks from its tip and flashes across the ice toward Jessica and Eva. It turns sharply upward, intercepting the missile in a small explosion above their heads, dissolving it into fragments of white metal as thin as paper that float in the air like snow.

A bolt of orange lightning bursts from the ship.

Another sphere of energy erupts from the tip of Aanak’s Stone, streaking across the divide between her and Jessica. This time, it stops above Jessica’s head and flattens out into a thin membrane that envelops her and Eva, shielding them from the jagged orange tongue of fire from the ship.

Again and again, the transport pours armaments and energy bursts on Jessica and Eva. Each time, it’s repelled by the energy membrane protecting them.

Aanak approaches them with her own protective shield. As they all came together on the ice, the shields merge.

The old woman looks up at Eva. “Why are you still here?”

“Aanak.” Eva’s eyes open wide with wonder. “You have a Stone. You never told me—”

“There was nothing to say.” The old woman’s face is bathed in a warm glow.

The sound of shrieks catches their attention far to the right, four hundred meters away near the crest of the rocky ridge. A single attack-heli moves in circles low to the ground, its search lights revealing the running forms of desperate men and women, scattered like sheep on a hillside. Bolts of an orange laser shoot out of the underbelly of the ship, cutting through the night air like jagged-edged blades tearing apart the bodies of fleeing villagers with abandon.

Another ship blasts over the three women’s heads toward the ridge, rushing to the scene of carnage to join in the killing.

“Forgive me.”
Aanak
stretches out her arms. Bending forward, she emits an audible grunt, as if pouring all her bodily energy into her Stone. Glowing white hot, an arc of plasma jumps from its tip and shoots into the night sky like a torpedo, crossing the open area between the village and the ridge in less than a second, and slamming into one of the attack-helis.

For an instant, the whole area flashes with white light as the ship explodes into fragments that float to the ground like a gentle rain.

The membrane of light surrounding Aanak, Eva and Jessica grows thinner and fainter.

“The taking of life is wrong, but they leave me no choice.” Aanak fires another projectile of energy at the remaining transport. It collapses into a single point and bursts into brilliant streams of light rising up and falling to the ground in a slow arc.

The first of the villagers stumbles between the massive rocks of the ridge and disappears from view into a cave.

Aanak trembles. Her knees drop to the ice. “Now, for the two of you. I don’t have much strength left. Do not mourn me.” She grabs both their wrists with one bony hand.

Jessica realizes what
Aanak
is doing. “Wait—”

But it’s too late. The air flashes white, blinding Jessica. When she opens her eyes, her and Eva are standing a few meters from the rocks at the top of the ridge, the last of the villagers rushing up the hill toward them.

They see Aanak, lying on the ice alone under the transport, her body bathed in a tube of light from the attack-ship, a thin film of pink clinging to her body.

A barrage of missile launches break from the underbelly of the ship straight down on her.

A single thread of white shoots up from the ground through the arctic air into the attack-heli. As its lights fade and shudder, it spins out of control, careening to the ground into a heap of wreckage a few meters from the old woman. Smoke rises from its hulk.

Aanak’s pink shield is gone.

J
hata eyes Matt as he approaches her. “Are you finally going to
do
something?”

Matt says nothing, but drops his gaze to Leo, still crumpled in a ball on the ground near Jhata’s feet. Broken and twisted bodies are scattered across the courtyard. The people left alive cower in a far corner, knees on the ground, hands clasped in prayer, looking up into the sky. They are chanting words, at first unintelligible to Matt, but as he listens, he understands.

Jhata, Jhata, Jhata.

“Now
that
is power,” she says. “Even as I kill them with wanton abandon, they pray to me for protection. But their prayers are in vain.” Darts of red energy burst out of the Stones in her hands, sweeping past Matt and across the courtyard. More screams of agony rise in the air as people fall to the ground behind him.

A flood of hatred swells in Matt’s chest. Hatred for Jhata. Hatred for the power she wields. Hatred for the destruction she inflicts without thought or reflection. Hatred of himself for his own lack of power to stop her.

“You hate me?” A subtle grin appears on Jhata’s lips. “Embrace it and see where it leads you.”

Matt fights back the hatred, trying to imagine Jhata as an innocent girl, like Yarah, picking up her first Stone, fascinated at the world it opened to her. In his mind’s eye, he sees her kneeling beside a sick man, placing her hands on his chest, healing him.

“Don’t fool yourself.” Jhata stands with a relaxed look on her face. “I never did anything like that.”

The people in the courtyard whimper and wail, running their hands along the circular wall, searching for a way out. A stack of wooden crates leaning against the wall tumbles to the ground, brought down by the multitude of bodies scaling it to get out.

Jhata takes a step closer to Matt. “Would you really like to know what I did with my first Stone after I found it?”

Matt says nothing. Opening his mind, he searches for a way to stop Jhata, a way to get Yarah and Leo out alive. But all his attempts to use the Stone, other than to protect himself and Yarah, are futile. Jhata has everything locked down.

“First, I killed an old housekeeper we had. She never liked me and secretly wished that I would die. I know because I was constantly bombarded by her thoughts. So I came to her at night and cut out her vocal cords. Then I did a live dissection of her body, making sure she didn’t die until I was done.” Jhata stares into Matt’s eyes. “It was great fun but left a terrible mess and took a lot of explaining to my parents.”

“Stop,” Matt says.

“And when my parents wouldn’t believe my lies, well, then I killed them too. In the same way.” Her eyes drop to the ground. “It made me so angry that I went on a rampage and killed every person that ever had an evil thought about me. Hundreds of them. And a few others, just for fun. All this when I was twelve years old.” She looks back at Matt. “
Now
do you hate me?”

“You’re lying.” Revulsion and loathing pour into Matt’s mind like water running downhill to fill an empty reservoir. He struggles in vain to bring up the image of the Woman, but he does remember her words.

Love is power.

Matt lets go of his thoughts about Jhata.

“I refuse,” he says.

“Refuse? Refuse to what?”

“Hate you.”

Jhata bursts into laughter. “That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve heard in a long time. It’s easy to make you hate me.” She grits her teeth and scans the remaining survivors in the courtyard. Orange flames shoot from her Stones past Matt to the last group of villagers huddling in a far corner. They scream and scatter, trying to avoid it.

A small boy runs away from the group in a zigzag pattern, and collapses at the feet of Matt, breathing his last.

Jhata’s eyes drop. “Now do you hate me?”

Matt shakes his head. “Never.”

“Well, now, that presents a problem.” Jhata gazes at the courtyard. All the villagers are dead. “We’ve run out of material here. Let’s change the scale and see if that does the trick.”

For an instant, Jhata’s eyelids close.

The air shifts. As Matt looks at Jhata, her body is a blur of color. When it comes back into focus, they are standing in the center of a dark open space. Matt’s eyes grow accustomed to the dark, and he sees that it’s the inside of a round dome more than a hundred meters from side to side.

Stars float in the air before his eyes like tiny hovering fireflies.

Leo lies on the floor nearby, still not moving. Yarah is ten meters off to Matt’s left with a faint bubble of white light clinging to her body, concentrating fiercely. The bubble shimmers in the darkness, pulsing with multiple colors.

Good girl
, Matt thinks.