Project 731 (25 page)

“Endo,” I say. “How long to get to Maine without killing us?”

“An hour,” he says.

“Then we’ll be back in time to see Salt Lake City laid to waste.”

I ignore the grumbling voices all around me. I understand what Maigo is suggesting. I can see how it would work. And aside from our close bond, I’m not sure how I can really argue against it, or take it away from her. But I’ll be damned if I let her go without reminding her of what she’s signing up for.

“Take us home.”

38

“Why are we here?” Maigo stands with her arms crossed, but she’s no longer shrunken in on herself, hiding behind her bangs. She’s got the long black hair tied back in a tight ponytail. This might be the first time I’ve really seen her whole face at once. Not that I can see her very well. It’s dark and my flashlight sucks. There are GOD goggles in the X-35, but I don’t want them knowing where we are, or recording this conversation.

“For perspective,” I say, stepping through the doorway into the morgue beneath the ruined laboratory in Maine. “This is where it started. Where you started.”

“And you wanted me to remember what it’s like to kill people?” She’s on the defense, putting up walls like a typical teenager, which is really what I want for her. “I haven’t forgotten. How could I?”

“No, I—”

“It would be different. I’m stronger. My will is stronger. I could control her.”

The last sentence is spoken with a trace of doubt. While both of us are certain that Maigo’s rejoining Nemesis would restore the beast’s conscience, would she really be able to reign the instinctual monster in? Or would she be locked inside, while it rampaged again? Would she relieve the horrors that plague her? Would she be reminded what human flesh tastes like?

I step up to the wall where the word Nemesis is scrawled in ancient Greek, in blood. The boney remains of the woman who was slain to write this message lay to my right.
When this mess is over, I really need to have her taken care of
. Some part of Maigo was more human than Kaiju back then. She could think, could write in a language she never knew in life.

“I want you to remember what you’re giving up,” I say. “And to understand what you’re asking me to give up.”

She’s silent. Maybe waiting for a classic Hudson punch line. But I’m out of jokes. I point to the wall. “You remember doing this?”

She nods.

“Do you remember waking up?”

“It’s...it’s fuzzy. Like a dream. Not really.” She looks up at the blood that dripped from the word before drying. “This is my first real memory...after my... After my murder.
Her
murder.”

Maigo knows that she’s not the same Maigo who was killed, but only the carrier of her memories and DNA. That girl is still dead and buried, her soul gone to wherever the souls of innocent children go. Probably someplace better. Someplace without monsters.

“What about the second time?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“When you were—in a non-religious way—born again, from Nemesis.”

“I...I remember waking up in Beverly. You were there. And Ash. And Buddy.” She smiles at the memory.

“Do you remember how I looked?”

“Relieved,” she says. “And...injured? You had bruising around your neck. And the side of your face. That was from the Washington fight, right?”

I shake my head. “That was from you.”

She stares at me. “You woke up once in the three days between when Collins and I found you and your first memory. For ten minutes.”

I can see she’s afraid to ask, but she manages to get the words out. “What happened?”

“Can you still get in my head?”

“I’ve been trying not to,” she says. “Since I blew the whole engagement thing.”

“Good call,” I say. “But I want you to try to do it now. Just like when it’s Christmas morning and we’re both kids, but I want you to let go. Let me direct the path.”

She doesn’t say “okay,” or put her hands on my head, or anything else. One second we’re standing in an abandoned morgue, the next we’re standing beside a Christmas tree in my childhood living room. But neither of us are kids. We came here because I was thinking about this scene.

I shift my attention forward in time, to the day following Maigo’s recovery from Washington. We managed to sneak her back without anyone knowing. She was cleaned up and attended to by a doctor we had sign a DHS non-disclosure agreement. The diagnosis was something close to a coma, but with a lot of brain activity. She called it ‘a deep sleep brought on by extreme exhaustion,’ and felt confident Maigo would wake soon.

And she did, later that day.

The memory returns.

I’m sitting beside Maigo’s bed, bleary eyed and twisting my red beanie cap in my hands. Maigo’s eyes are closed, but shifting back and forth rapidly, like she’s in some kind of frenetic REM sleep cycle. Just as my eyes start to slide shut, Maigo lunges up in bed, eyes open wide, gasping.

The sound and sudden motion pull me to my feet. But it’s a mistake.

Maigo reels toward me, acting on defensive instinct, throwing out a punch that catches the side of my head and knocks me into the wall. Then she’s out of bed, slamming her body into mine and wrapping her fingers around my throat.

Tears streak down her cheeks.

Her breathing is fast and deep.

She looks back and forth, eyes darting, confusion enveloping her.

Despite having the life choked out of me, all I feel is pity. I can’t bring myself to fight back, and when Maigo finally looks at me, her grip loosens. Then her eyes widen with recognition. “Jon?”

“If...you...don’t...kill me.”

She releases me and steps back, bumping into the bed and sprawling around, looking for an attack.
She’s used to being Nemesis
, I think. Used to being attacked every time she steps out of the ocean. Her last memory would have been of dying.

Of saving me.

“You remember me?”

Her head snaps back toward me. “Christmas.”

When I nod, the strength goes out of her, and she falls into my arms.

“Are we alive?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Am I safe?”

“You are.”

“We protect each other, right?”

It’s then that I know I’m talking to the will within Nemesis, who had been protecting me, in Beverly and again in Washington. This is the girl who gave her life for mine, and I would do everything I could to return the favor. “Always.”

She reaches up for my swelling face, grasping it with both hands. A flash of...something, like memories, but simpler. Something like love, like what fathers—the good ones—feel for their children, drives its way into my soul, taking root, depending on me for growth. For life.

And then she’s gone. Unconscious again.

The memory stops, but we haven’t left the dream room. Maigo is still in my arms. But she opens her eyes. Stands. “I understand now.”

Thank God.

“I knew that you loved me. That you accepted me like a daughter. I never doubted that. But I didn’t know about this. I didn’t know what you promised me. I didn’t know you
really
felt like my father.”

“Kinda weird, right?”

She smiles. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For doing this to you.”

“I’ve never regretted taking you in. I never will.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you—oh...” I walk to the window, which isn’t real, and look out at the view of Beverly, which isn’t charred like it is in the real world. “You’re still going through with it.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my father.”

“That’s...stupid,” I say.

“Because you taught me what’s right and wrong. From the first time I saw you, and tried to eat you, you have been risking everything to help other people. And now I have a chance to do the same, and maybe make up for some of the horrible things I did with Nemesis.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“Part of it was. Nemesis might have blinded me to the death and destruction, but the thirst for revenge? The need to kill Tilley? That came from me. I need to do this...”

When I say nothing, she steps up next to me, our faces warmed by the sun. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“This is what Hudsons do, right?”

I turn toward her. “What?”

“When Watson created my new identity, we made my last name Hudson. It was going to be a surprise...” She smiles up at me. “Surprise.”

Adopting Maigo was never a possibility, because she was, technically, dead. I knew Watson had created a new identity for her—which we can easily do as a division of the DHS—retaining her first name, but I’d never asked what they used for a last name, and it never came up. And now that I’m thinking about it...

“Take us back,” I say.

The dream ends, and we’re back in the bleak underground morgue. We head back outside, and I pull my phone from my pocket, dialing Watson. He answers on the second ring. “Are you back in the Crow’s Nest?”

“Yep, we’re just settling in now. Coop is coordinating with—”

“Never mind that,” I say. “Can you access Maigo’s credentials? Her Social Security card? Birth certificate? All that?”

“Yeah,” he says. “We did make them, after all. Why?”

“Make her my daughter.” While I can’t go through the normal adoption channels, I
can
change the records.

I hear Maigo gasp next to me.

Watson is silent.

“Watson?”

I hear typing keys, but nothing else. I check the phone. Full signal. “Watson?”

“Done,” he says, and I hang up without saying goodbye. I turn to Maigo. “
Now
you’re a Hudson.”

I’m expecting a hug or something more stereotypically girly, but Maigo gets serious. “Then now we can do what Hudsons do.” She takes my hand. “Together.”

The last thing I want is to help this girl, my daughter, now on paper and in my heart, rejoin Nemesis. She will lead a life of violence and chaos, of pain and battle. But...she could save people. Millions of people. Knowing the weight she feels from her past as Nemesis, I can’t take that from her. And she’s right, Hudsons save people. “We might not share the same blood, but sometimes nurture wins over nature. Let’s go kick some ass.” My toe strikes a rock on the ground, and I sprawl into the dirt.

Maigo helps me up. “Definitely don’t share the same blood.”

Ten minutes later, we’re back in the X-35, minus Hawkins and Lilly, who are now being cared for by a few stunned and NDA-silenced doctors in Portland. Neither were happy about it, but Hawkins’s internal injuries needed tending, and Lilly, while returning to her senses, was still craving cheeseburgers and hardly in fighting shape. But they were happy to be reunited with Joliet, who was recovering nicely. They were being visited by their loud friend, and fellow Island 731 survivor, Bob Bray.

Woodstock is still with us, watching and learning as Endo lifts us off the ground and plots our course across the country. Alessi, Collins, Maigo and I sit in the back. Everyone knows the plan. No one likes it. But no one fights it, either, which is a good thing, because I’m still struggling with the idea of giving Maigo back to Nemesis. The trouble is, I can’t think of any other solution, and we’re going to be face-to-face with the giant in an hour.