Project 731 (18 page)

27

“Where are we?” Lilly asks, straining her neck to see through the cockpit windshield. She’s not the only one. Of the six of us, seated on either side of the plane’s small cargo hold, only Maigo seems uninterested in the view. As usual, she’s got her head down, face hidden by her long, straight hair. Normally, she’s hiding from the world. This time, I think she’s trying to hide her emotions from us. Nemesis, as horrible as the monster can be, was—and still is—part of her.

Endo reaches for the control panel Silhouette had used to open the floor panels. He pushes a series of buttons, looking comfortable, like he knows what he’s doing. Of course he does. He was part of this outfit for six months. This isn’t his first ride on the X-35.

The walls and floor around us flicker and then disappear. Lilly yanks her feet up in surprise. Endless city buildings zip past below. Nothing recognizable, just thousands of homes and businesses. And people. Lots of people. The air raid siren has warned them of the danger, but in a city of ten million, an evacuation quickly becomes gridlock.

“What the—” I say, but catch myself before I sound too stupid.

“There aren’t any windows,” Endo says. “Even the front windshield is an illusion. The images are captured in real time by thousands of high def cameras embedded in the aircraft’s skin and displayed on the interior, which is really just a series of large, flexible screens.”

“Just another piece of tech for you to take to Zoomb?” Silhouette says from the cockpit.

“I was never here for your technology,” Endo says.

Obsidian backhands Silhouette’s shoulder playfully. “He’s got a Kaiju crush, man. That’s why he spent so much time at Building-K.”

Endo ignores them and stands, leaning toward the wall at my back. “They’re touch sensitive, too.” He places both hands on the wall and slides them away from each other. Like a giant iPhone touch screen, the image zooms in, bringing downtown Los Angeles into focus. He swipes the view up a touch and then zooms again, honing in on an aberration. His next zoom brings it into focus.

The Tsuchi.

It’s bigger than was reported, and as it yanks an endless number of people from the city it’s crashing through, stuffing them in its mouth, I understand why—it’s growing. Fast. Just like Hawkins warned.

“Contact with Dark Matter in thirty seconds,” Silhouette says. “Sort your shit out.”

The first thing we all did after entering the X-35 was argue about who was going to plant the bacteria bomb on the Tsuchi’s back. In some ways, it would be easier if none of us wanted to do it, and we were forced to draw straws. In the end, cold hard logic won the day. As much as I would love to not do this, I have the most experience with this kind of thing—aside from Endo, who did not volunteer. I’m not about to risk the others’ lives on something that is my responsibility, and I outrank them. But...I’m not going in alone.

Much to Hawkins’s chagrin, Lilly is coming with me, for obvious reasons: she’s faster, stronger and can cling to a Kaiju-Tsuchi back like Spiderman on a wall. While Maigo’s strength might surpass Lilly’s, she’s in a bad place and hasn’t been training with the team the way Lilly has.

The view shows the city, and the Tsuchi, growing closer as the X-35 descends toward the U.S. Bank Tower, LA’s tallest and most iconic skyscraper.

“You ready?” I say to Lilly. “No screwing around. No showing off. As good as you are, you’ve never dealt with anything like that.” I point at the floor as we fly a thousand feet above the Tsuchi, now on the very outskirts of downtown.

She nods silently. She’s either trying to be on her best behavior, or she’s earnestly intimidated, which would be my preference.

I turn to Endo. “Arms out, I glide, arms back, I drop?”

“Like the wingsuit in Boston,” he says. “But you can accelerate, once, for five seconds. The trigger is beneath your chin. Tap it twice. Or you can try flapping.”

“I’d rather eat a bird than be a bird.” Lilly is wearing an identical, all black wingsuit designed by DARPA and used by GOD. Except for the all-black design, it functions very similarly to the wingsuit designed by my ex, Jenn. While I don’t think Jenn works for DARPA—she was way too anti-establishment to work for any kind of Man, government or corporate—I suspect this suit design might have been inspired by my wingsuit leap a few years back...with a few improvements. Unlike the bulky wingsuits worn by thrill-seeking enthusiasts, the ultra thin, super-strong fabric—made from goat-spider silk of all things—isn’t bunched up between my arms and legs, restricting movement. It’s all tucked away in the arms and legs, waiting for me to slap the button on my chest before springing out.

“Deployment in ten...nine...” Silhouette continues his countdown as the back hatch descends.

I turn to Hawkins and motion toward the cockpit. “Keep an eye on them, but take no action unless there’s no other choice.” I then turn to Collins and point at Endo. “Watch this asshole like a hawk.” And then to Maigo. I take her hands. She looks up at me through her hair.

“We’ll figure it out,” I tell her. “We’ll get through this, no matter what.”

“Be careful,” she says, and then to Lilly. “Don’t let him get hurt.”

Lilly gives a salute and leaps out of the still descending aircraft, landing on the rooftop thirty feet below.

Silhouette reaches “Three.”

“Love you,” I tell her, which gets a smile. I glance up at Collins, who is seated next to the girl. “Both of you.”

There’s a slight bump as the VTOL aircraft sets down on the roof. I pick up my bag and head down the ramp. Lilly waits for me at the bottom.

“That was mushy,” Lilly says.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure your Dad would have appreciated a goodbye, seeing how it’s likely we’re both going to die.”

Lilly looks up at the now rising X-35, its hatch sliding shut. She manages to exchange a wave with Hawkins. Then they’re off, cruising over the rooftop and diving down the far side. Lilly looks a touch despondent. I must have hit a nerve.

I give her shoulder a whack. “Don’t sweat it kid. I was just joking.”

“Nice try,” she says, and heads across the large, round helicopter landing pad on which we’ve been deposited. The landing pad is a massive white circle, with two red rings, one on the outer fringe, the second around a huge number 12. There’s a one-story drop to the deck below and then a short, jagged wall that surrounds the roof like a child’s drawing of the sun.

“All aboard,” Lilly says, reaching her arms out to me. I throw an arm around her neck and hop up. She holds me in her arms with ease.

“My hero,” I say, and then Lilly jumps. My stomach lurches and catches up with me a moment later when we land on the next level. Lilly deposits me on the floor, and we both head for the wall. In the distance, I can see Dodger’s Stadium, or at least, what’s left of it. I then lean over the wall for a view of Los Angeles’s financial district below...and the monster destroying it.

The Tsuchi is two blocks away, making short work of a bunch of short buildings, all with tennis courts on the roofs. I don’t think it’s trying to cause destruction. It’s more like a kid with a savage hankering for peanuts, destroying the shells to get at the morsels inside. In this case, people. I’m not sure how it’s able to find all the people it’s plucking from the buildings and vehicles nearby. It’s like it can detect them without needing to see them. While the eight legs stomp through the short buildings, the tail whips back and forth, stabbing into the windows of the 55-story Bank of America building, pulling impaled victims out like an anteater does ants.

The creature is definitely larger than was reported. Its body and tail are both a good fifty feet longer, making it three hundred feet from one end to the other, but most of that is tail and limbs. The bulk of its body is still 1/3 the size of Nemesis. Big enough to land on if it’s standing still, but its uncanny ability to pluck people from buildings has me concerned. Luckily, I’ve got a buzzing fly to distract it with.

The X-35 swoops around the square Bank of America building, its lines of windows looking like oversized pinstripes...at least, the ones that haven’t been punched through yet. The Tsuchi pays the plane no heed, that is, until a chain gun emerges from its underbelly and opens fire.

As the line of bright orange tracer rounds stretch toward the monster, I cringe, hoping Obsidian, who I’m sure is behind the gun controls, knows to avoid hitting the bright orange membranes. Luckily, most of the Tsuchi’s membranes are on its underside, but there is one on either side of its neck. Its eight eyes look like they could be made of the same explosive stuff, or they’re at least covered by a protective layer of it.

My worry, it turns out, is misplaced. The thousands of rounds being spewed by the X-35 don’t come close to any of the membranes. But they do hit the layers of impenetrable armor, ricocheting away into the city. I duck down as a window one floor down explodes from a burst of deflected chain gun fire.

The buzzing gun falls silent a moment later. In the brief pause that follows, the sound of falling glass rings out around the city. Hundreds of shattered windows. I peek up over the wall. The chain gun decimated the facades of several skyscrapers, but it also did its job. The Tsuchi is now focused solely on the X-35, which is hovering at five hundred feet, back out over the path of destruction where the Tsuchi can’t do much more damage than it’s already done. It also puts the monster’s back to us, which is what we’ve been waiting for.

“Let’s go,” I say, putting my hands on the wall, prepping to jump up and over.

A vibration rattling up through the building, and then through my body, stops me. I grab hold of Lilly’s leg. She’s already perched on the edge, about to leap. “Hold on!”

“What?” Her talons dig into the wall, rooting her in place.

The vibration rattles through us again. Through the whole city. And it doesn’t coincide with anything the Tsuchi is doing.

No
, I think, turning west.
Not now
. I run around the building’s rooftop, stopping when I reach the western side.

In the far distance, through a curtain of light brown haze, visible only because I’m atop a thousand-foot-tall building, is a line of blue ocean. But the view is marred by the rising, black figure of Nemesis. She’s huge, but moving fast, built for power and speed. It will only be a few minutes before she arrives, and there’s no doubting why she’s here. The Tsuchi. The fiery injustice Nemesis feels when mankind commits crimes against itself must pale in comparison to what the Tsuchi did to Nemesis. She’s not interested in the city or the people in it. She’s making a beeline toward downtown, flattening block after congested block, and she won’t stop until she gets here.

“What should we do?” Lilly asks. “Let them fight?”

My face twists like I’ve bitten into a lemon grown in hell. “That’s a horrible idea. This is a U.S. city with millions of people in it, not a Kaiju battleground. We’re going to do what we came here to do, hopefully in time to turn Nemesis around, before any real damage is done.” I climb up onto the wall and leap off. Lilly bounds over the wall after me.

28

As my fall rapidly approaches both terminal velocity and a terminal meeting with the ground, I slap my chest, and the wingsuit fabric snaps out. While my fall isn’t exactly arrested, it is redirected and slowed, allowing me to pull away from the U.S. Bank building. A snap of fabric pulls my eyes to the right. Lilly glides beside me, a smile on her face.

Her confidence, while potentially misplaced, bolsters my own. After all, even if we die, what cooler way could there be to die than to wingsuit jump onto the back of a Kaiju-spider in defense of mankind.
History books, here we come
.

The wind rushing all around me blocks out all other sound, until the Tsuchi roars. The high pitched wail strikes me like a shockwave. Had I been standing on the ground, it might have stumbled me, but here, moving through the air, I punch right through it and continue on my downward trajectory, a human missile with a bomb strapped to his waist.

We streak past the ruined Bank of America building, twinkling panes of glass still fluttering from its gutted side, and then over what little remains of those weird tennis-court-topped buildings. Ahead is a flattened hotel, office park and the 11o freeway, where the X-35 hovers, just out of reach. They’ve lured the creature onto the freeway to avoid more structural damage, but the many lanes are already clogged with vehicles. Traffic is stopped to the horizon in either direction, with most people abandoning their vehicles and making a run for it. Despite the X-35’s distraction, the Tsuchi continues its feast, plucking up fleeing people and devouring them whole. I can almost see the thing getting bigger. But the real problem is that it’s picking off people without looking.

It’s going to sense us coming. Our only hope is that people moving at 100 mph are harder to catch than those scurrying along the ground. I try to glance back over my shoulder in search of Nemesis, but I’m quickly pulled off course. I correct my aim back to the Tsuchi and fold my arms back, dropping down and speeding up. Lilly follows suit, her ability to watch and mimic other people making her look like a seasoned thrill seeker, which I suppose in some ways, she is. After living on an island fraught with danger, she’s been cooped up with the same group of people for a year. This must feel like a vacation. When she gives a loud, “whoop,” I’m sure of it.

When we’re within a few hundred feet of the Tsuchi, I splay my arms and legs wide, slowing down to make sure I hit the target, rather than flying right past. As Lilly and I slow, movement to my left catches my eyes. The long tail, pulling back from the Tsuchi’s mouth, is swinging around, the giant jousting lance pointed straight at my side. It looks like it’s moving slowly, but that’s just because it’s so damn big.

“Lilly!” I shout. My voice is lost in the wind, but Lilly’s keen hearing picks it up anyway. She turns in my direction, eyes widening as she sees the impending attack.

I’m about to fold my arms back and hope the increase in speed will help us dodge the attack, but Lilly has other plans. She angles her body to the side and then rolls up and over me. Before I can understand what she’s up to, I feel her land on top of me, her claws digging into my armor, locking us tight together. I don’t see or feel her tap the button beneath her chin, but the two small rockets at the back of her wingsuit kick on and launch us forward, and down.

As we rocket toward the Tsuchi, accelerating past 150 mph, I catch sight of the giant stinger, sailing past, uncomfortably close. Simply diving wouldn’t have done it. Lilly saved my life. Temporarily. We’re still about to become smears on the Tsuchi’s armored back.

Lilly’s claws retract and we separate with just five seconds left until impact. It takes me two to reach up and slap the button on my chest again, and another two for the rapid deployment chute to explode out and unfurl, catching the wind and snapping my descent to a 20 mph impact. The remaining second is stretched into five, thanks to the chute, but the impact with the Tsuchi is still jarring. I hit the solid plate hard on my side, slamming my head against it. The Tsuchi rises up for a moment, and I slide toward the ground, the chute catching air once more and then snagging on one of the monster’s many spines. I’m slammed back down again, a cowboy on a bucking Kaiju.

Hanging in place by my parachute, I toggle my throat mic. “We’re down! Back off, so this thing stops thrashing like there’s a bear trap on its nuts.”

“Copy that,” Silhouette replies, and the X-35 accelerates up into the sky, far enough away that the Tsuchi loses interest and settles back down onto all eight limbs. Silhouette’s voice returns a moment later, trying to conceal his surprise, but failing. “Uh, are you aware that Dark Matter Three is en route to your position from the coast?”

“Her name is Nemesis,” I say, trying to roll over onto my stomach. “And yes.”

With my hands and knees under me, I get my bearings. I’m on the Tsuchi’s back, but toward the tail end, which is the opposite end of where I want to be. But still, I wingsuited onto the back of a Kaiju. That’s pretty impressive on its own. Now if only I could keep up that level of awesomeness... I unclip myself from the parachute and am immediately thrown to the side as the Tsuchi turns its attention back to downtown Los Angeles, and eating people. I roll hard, reaching out, but I’m slammed against a spine and spun around.

Then, all at once, I’m locked in place. For a moment, I think the Tsuchi has reached up and caught me, but when I look up, it’s Lilly I see. With her talons locked into the armor’s porous texture, she stands easily, bending her knees to absorb the vibrations rippling through the thing’s back as it moves. Luckily, its eight legs mean the trip is fairly smooth.

Lilly grips the armor on my back and lifts me up. “Why are you here again?”

I squeeze my fists into balls, twice in rapid succession, the way Endo showed me. Hooked metal claws not too dissimilar to Lilly’s pop out of the finger tips. “Now we both have claws.” The DARPA climbing gloves are yet another high tech toy found in the X-35’s many compartments, which, according to Silhouette, “contain the most advanced equipment and weaponry that the world’s most elite covert-ops team could need. We have every potential situation covered.”

“Claws, but not muscles,” she says, tossing me ahead of her and then climbing past me with ease.

Using the claws to find good handholds, I climb over the Tsuchi’s back. Lilly helps me up and over the overlapping armor plates, which grind and shift with each rapid step of the creature’s eight legs. Once we’re past the downward slope leading to the tail, we crest the top. I look down at the monstrous head, where the screams of people are crushed to oblivion, and a slew of eyes will see us coming. “It’s all downhill from here.”

I unbuckle the bacteria bomb strapped to my stomach. The round, black disc is fairly simple, and it already has a one-minute timer programmed in, just enough time for us to make our getaway...maybe. Odds are, we’ll have to ride this out until the Tsuchi’s mind is consumed by bacteria and it’s dead on the ground. “I’ll attach the bomb,” I say to Lilly. “You make sure I don’t fall off. But if I do, or something else happens to me...”

Lilly pats the other bacteria bomb buckled to her stomach. “Then I’ll finish the job. Got it.”

“Let’s go—ooh!” The Tsuchi stops suddenly, and forward momentum pitches me forward. I tumble onto the creature’s armored back and roll toward its head, coughing out air as I topple over the overlapping plates. I stop at the bottom, on my back. I open my eyes to Lilly, descending through the air. She lands next to me in an effortless crouch. “Smooth.”

When she pulls me to my feet again, I freeze. We’re standing, dead center, on the Kaiju’s head. It’s stopped moving now, and all eight of its eyes, though lacking pupils, are locked on us. But will it attack its own head? Not wanting to find out, I crouch down slowly, placing the bacteria bomb onto the armored shell. The device whirs loudly as the bolts automatically spin, digging into armor, locking the device in place. I push a single button, and stand, mission accomplished.

But before I can declare victory, jump ship or be skewered by the Tsuchi, my happy ending is ruined by the sound of a skyscraper plummeting toward Earth. The Bank of America building topples like a felled tree, pitching over sideways, and landing atop the clover leaf-shaped Westin Bonaventure Hotel. A shockwave rolls through the city, bursting windows. A cloud of tan dust and debris explodes out into the city, rolling between buildings and covering the freeway to the northwest, while leaving our position in the clear. All around, I can hear car alarms mingled with horrified screams.

The Tsuchi, Lilly and I all remain rooted in place, attention fixed on the fallen building and the towering column of smoke left in its wake. The rising soot is moving unnaturally.

Orange light flickers from within the cloud. It swirls away, pushed by something large from the other side. And then, she’s here. Nemesis. The Queen of the Monsters steps through the smog and debris, orange eyes fixed on the Tsuchi.

She bellows a roar that makes my insides quake, but it’s not nearly as loud as the shriek returned by the Tsuchi. I’m not sure if it’s actually louder, but since we’re at ground zero for a Kaiju roar, the sound sends Lilly and me down to our knees, hands over our ears.

When the roar fades and I open my eyes, my heart skips a beat. We’re in motion, headed straight for Nemesis...and she’s headed straight for us, arm raised to swat the Tsuchi like an oversized...well, like an oversized spider. Without shouting a warning, I leap onto Lilly’s back, wrap my arms around her and stand straight.

As Nemesis’s massive claws descend, I tap my chin down twice, triggering the jumpsuit’s rockets. They’re designed to gain altitude, or speed, when already moving, not for lift off, but they’re powerful enough to do the job. My arms strain as Lilly and I are lifted off the Tsuchi’s back. The first two seconds of propulsion only lifts us a hundred feet, but then, as Nemesis’s arm swishes beneath us and slams into the Tsuchi’s side, we cut through the sky, lifting up past Nemesis’s snarling face.

With just a second of propulsion left, the X-35 swoops into view, its back hatch open. I angle us toward it just as the rocket cuts out. Momentum carries us forward. I reach out with one hand. The clawed finger tips catch on the ramp’s outer edge. The jolting stop pries Lilly from my grasp and she falls, but not before we lock arms. Dangling by the ramp, I feel like I’m being drawn and quartered. My shoulders are about to pop out.

“How...much...do you...weigh?” I say to Lilly.

She gasps up at me, suddenly a teenager again. I’d laugh if it wasn’t for the pain and the fact that I’m about to drop us on top of Nemesis’s head.