Project 731 (26 page)

39

With every massive step, the earth quaking beneath her, Nemesis felt herself gaining on the last remaining beacon calling for her to smite it. She understood that this creature had wronged her, and that she had to destroy it or forever be pricked by its continued existence. She also knew it would feel good, that in wronging her, the enemy had also given her a gift. It had awakened her mind to the knowledge that silencing the voices through vengeance not only gave her peace, it made her feel good.

But at the same time, the energy each kill gave her, also felt empty. From her first memories in this new body, Nemesis had been a plural. A warring duality.

That second part of her, the voice that tamped down the thirst and drove her to consider the lives of the tiny people who trembled in fear, was missing. Her primal nature raged at the very concept of...missing that part of her. The longing remained constant, though a distant second to the siren call drawing her toward the violator.

And then to the rest of them. The humans. She could feel the missing part of her. Distant but alive. But without that second voice, she couldn’t deny her thirst for vengeance.

So she charged on, the memory of her dual nature a slight voice in the background, washed out by bloodlust.

Her target had stopped. Or slowed. Either way, she would reach it soon. Each step increased her thirst. Her towering legs moved faster, kicking through homes and vehicles and endless stretches of dry land, the heat itching her black skin. Driven by ravenous desire, Nemesis leaned forward, shaking the ground as her hands impacted the ground and her claws dug caves. Then she lunged, propelling herself with her powerful back legs.

The ground beneath her blurred.

Her speed doubled.

The desert gave way to neighborhoods.

With each lunge and landing, the landscape around her crumbled. Alarms sounded. Explosions filled the air. People screamed, their voices lost in the quaking rumble of each step forward. A mile high cloud of dust and ash trailed in her wake, cast up by her tail, which thrashed a zigzag of destruction, whipping back and forth.

But as she closed in on her enemy, she also felt the presence of her former self growing stronger. She was coming. But still an afterthought.

Nemesis looked to the horizon.

Beyond the manicured neighborhoods and emptied downtowns, she saw smoke. She smelled it, too, mixed with blood. Her stomach churned. She hadn’t eaten since waking. The little people scattered about wouldn’t sate her hunger, but her enemy would.

Nemesis roared, her voice booming, the sound waves streaking out ahead of her, leveling everything in her path before she crushed what remained underfoot and swept it all away with her swishing tail.

A high-pitched wail replied from the distance, but it didn’t sound afraid.

It sounded defiant and angry.

The enemy hadn’t stopped running because it was distracted by food, it had stopped to fight.

Nemesis bellowed again, and still three miles away, she began lurching, her chest heaving, her throat constricting and flexing. As she lunged up and came down on her massive arms, she expelled a bright orange glob, which slurped free and shot out with a pop. The projectile soared toward the horizon, pursued by Nemesis, and announced her approach by unleashing the fires of hell and harsh judgment on the violator and everything else around it.

The shockwave from the explosion washed back over Nemesis, stumbling her. Her hands fell back as her torso ground through the city, but her legs never stopped pumping, and she quickly got her arms under her again, charging into the wave of heat generated by the explosion.

A wall of smoke blocked her view of what lay ahead, but she charged onward, parting the black cloud with her mass, the swell of air around her kicking the ash skyward.

Then she saw the enemy, blackened, but unharmed. It stood boldly on four thick legs, its four talon-tipped arms open wide to embrace her, a city at its back. The creature was easily her size now, perhaps larger, but Nemesis never slowed. Instead, she roared once more, shoved off the ground and dove into the waiting arms of her enemy, sending them both catapulting into the city beyond.

40

Katsu Endo sat at the X-35’s controls, but he was only pretending to fly. Once he’d input the flight path into the system, including preferred altitudes, speeds and airspace, he could sit back and let the vehicle’s onboard radar system automatically avoid any obstacles it came across. Endo couldn’t fly a plane, or a helicopter, but to operate the X-35, you didn’t really need to know how to pilot. While you could pilot manually, all you needed was basic competency with a touch-screen operating system. And when you did need to manually pilot, the designers had made the controls as simple as a video game, no doubt understanding that future pilots would be most comfortable with a flight stick and simple foot controls. And with the repulse engines, it was possible.

So instead of piloting, he was listening.

And planning.

Hudson didn’t trust him entirely; that was no secret. But he didn’t loathe Endo as much as he pretended to, and despite his frequent threats of legal action, Hudson had yet to attempt subduing Endo, despite ample opportunity.

It’s because
, Endo knew,
the solution to the Kaiju problem is far more complicated than black and white
. Both men occupied gray territory and had done questionable things to protect entire cities, and the ones they loved. And, by the sounds of it, Hudson wasn’t done.

If Endo understood correctly, Nemesis was looking for a partner. The monster had been born half-human after all. It made sense that, now lacking Maigo, Nemesis would want her back, to share life. Nemesis Prime had been a lone beast, destined to smite in solitude, but Nemesis was different. She required a partner to be whole. At least, that was the way Endo understood it.

Lilly had spoken of a spot on the back of Nemesis’s neck, an opening, where black tendrils had reached for her. Endo could only assume, as Hudson and Maigo clearly were, that entering that space would then link Maigo and Nemesis once more.

It was a bold plan. Even for Hudson. While the man could be...thorny, Endo had come to respect the man’s creative solutions to problems, and his willingness to enter the gray areas of morality. But could he handle what Cole had revealed to them? Could the man sacrifice Maigo, and then, lacking her strength, work against an invasion?

Endo didn’t think so. What Hudson was about to do would break him.

There were few people on Earth, save for Endo himself and Cole’s people at GOD, who had the qualifications to handle, without losing their minds, an event on the magnitude of an alien assault. Losing Hudson would not be good. But...Hudson would do everything he could to save the people of Salt Lake, including sacrificing Maigo, who Endo had overheard, was now legally Hudson’s daughter.

Endo marveled at the girl’s willingness to sacrifice herself. She was as brave as he imagined a girl born from Nemesis would be. But like Hudson, Endo suspected her loss would be detrimental in the long run.

Sacrifices have to be made sometimes
, he told himself. And what greater love was there than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends?

Friends... The word had become a stranger to Endo. While Alessi was his half-sister and bound to him by blood and common exploits at Zoomb, his only real friends considered him an enemy. He glanced back at Hudson, Collins, Alessi and Maigo. He would never tell Hudson, but he considered the man a friend, and a trusted ally.

A twitch of motion pulled his attention to Woodstock’s mustache. The man was smiling.

“You ain’t even flying, are you?” Woodstock said.

Endo smiled and took his hands off the flight stick. The X-35 continued forward, rocketing across the country at Mach 3.

“God damn, I love Future Betty something fierce!”

I turn to
the cockpit, wondering what has Woodstock all worked up. He’s talking animatedly to Endo, who is actually smiling. What the hell? Given Woodstock’s gesticulations, I can tell they’re discussing the X-35. So I tune them out and turn back to the three ladies sitting across from me.

Collins has her hand interlocked with Maigo’s. For some reason, seeing them together like this, daughter and future mother—I hope—makes what we’re about to do so much harder.

“Then we’re all agreed,” I say. “You’re not going in until it’s safe. Until the battle is over.”

Maigo nods, doing her best to keep up a brave front, but the tightness of her jaw and the uncommon bounce in her leg give her away.

“Then...” I take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “You’ll jump—are you sure about that? You’ve never done it before.”

“I think I can figure it out,” she says, channeling Lilly’s false confidence. “And if I’m honest, I’m pretty sure I could just jump without a parachute.”

Collins raises a finger in the air, looking uncomfortable. “I’m sorry to even mention this, but what’s to stop Nemesis from eating you on the way down?”

“She can feel me, and I can feel her. She’ll know who I am.”

“And she’s just going to let you land on her back and...climb inside,” Alessi asks, showing her first signs of doubt about our plan.

“Something like that,” Maigo says. “If Lilly is right.”

“And if she’s not?” Collins asks.

“Then she’s going to bug out,” I say. “And call us for a pick-up.”

Maigo nods, but I can see she’s not counting on that happening. The hope of it even being a possibility might be enough to derail her nerves.

“Coming up on Salt Lake,” Woodstock says, “and it’s a hot mess.”

The walls and floor of the X-35 display the feed from the cameras on the exterior. Salt Lake City lays ahead, the majority of its buildings still standing. But that’s about to change, because as I watch, Nemesis dives headlong into the Tsuchi, which now matches Nemesis’s three-hundred-fifty-foot height. The pair rise into the air like a tidal wave, crashing down on a rocky shoreline. But instead of breaking on the rocks, they break straight through them, flattening a long building that looks something like a giant, covered, silver casserole dish. But as the pair arc back toward the ground, I recognize the building behind the Tsuchi and cringe.

The Tsuchi’s eight limbs twist back, catching the ground on either side of the ornate Salt Lake City Temple, the largest Mormon temple in the world and the headquarters for Salt Lake City’s bike enthusiasts. The Tsuchi’s fall comes to a grinding halt, its strength matching Nemesis’s. The giant spider’s back seems to tap against the golden angel, Nephi, that tops the temple’s tallest spire, and then stop, as though supported by divine power.

But then Nemesis roars in anger, stands tall, lifts a foot and drives it into the Tsuchi’s chest. The eight-limbed Kaiju crashes back, flattening the temple beneath its girth.

Well, the Mormons are officially going to hate Nemesis, now.

Nemesis doesn’t let up, lunging forward and jabbing one of her long claws into the Tsuchi’s side. The Tsuchi lets out a high-pitched shriek, but it’s far from finished. While Nemesis, looking absolutely frenzied, eyes radiating energy, teeth bared in a snarl, raises her free arm for a second strike, the Tsuchi’s lightning fast tail swoops around and tags Nemesis in the side, one, two, three times.

Oh no...

Never in all our planning had we considered the possibility that Nemesis might lose this fight, and we’d be stuck with an ever-growing Tsuchi fueled by a hunger for
all
men.

Nemesis cries out in pain and staggers back, placing her colossal hand on her side in a very human gesture of pain. Her cry becomes sharp. She flinches as though struck, being consumed from the inside.

While Nemesis is distracted, the Tsuchi rights itself, standing upright on its rear four legs, and in that position, standing as tall as Nemesis, its four, armored, spidery limbs twitching in front of it, arcs of electricity crackling between its bus-sized mandibles, I think it’s even more frightening than Nemesis or even her five siblings—Typhon, Karkinos, Scylla, Scrion and Drakon.

Next to Nemesis, the Tsuchi is nearly the tallest thing in Salt Lake City, with only three buildings being taller, by only fifty feet, give or take. Okay, so... Now it’s a MegaTsuchi. Knowing it’s inflicted a mortal wound, the Tsuchi hangs back and waits, its tail thrashing back and forth, decimating the facades of the buildings behind it.

I glance at Alessi. “Don’t tell me those are all...”

“Mormon church buildings,” she says, tapping a touch screen, reading information. “But most of downtown has been evacuated.”

Maigo kneels on the floor, hands pressed against the digital display showing us the action taking place two thousand feet below us. She cringes suddenly, seizing in pain. It hits me a moment later. I kneel beside her, wincing as my head blazes with pain transmitted from Nemesis and filtered through Maigo.

Maigo screams in time with Nemesis’s shrill roar, and I watch as three elephant-sized Tsuchi tear out of Nemesis’s side.