Project 731 (24 page)

Cole’s face gets serious, but I don’t think it has anything to do with my blatant disrespect. “Ten years ago, when the citadel in the Arctic was raised, we detected a powerful signal sent from near-Earth orbit and into deep space. We later learned that the Ferox attacking the scientific crew were simply trying to
prevent
that signal from being sent.”

“We’ve been compromised,” Endo says. “Their influence on us revealed.”

“Yes.” Cole takes a deep breath and sighs. “And the Aeros are coming back.” He looks me in the eyes. “We don’t know when, but they’ll eventually come, and we’re doing everything we can—” He turns to Collins. “—including breaking every rule in the book, in an effort to save the entire God damned planet. Imagine what a single Tsuchi could do if it was set loose in an enemy ship. We’d stand a real chance of surviving—”

“But at what cost?” Collins asks. “If we have to become something worse than human to survive, do we deserve to survive?”

“Anyone they didn’t kill would be enslaved.”

“There has to be a better way,” Collins says.

“When you figure it out, you let me know. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you would all leave without further conflict.” He puts his hand to his ear, where I see a small earbud. “It seems your friends have survived an encounter with Silhouette—”

As much as his words tense my muscles, the impact is dwarfed by a sudden impact that jolts the floor beneath us and fills the base with an echoing rumble. The lights flicker and go out.

The darkness lasts just a few seconds, and then power is restored. Cole is headed toward the wall, which in his location, must be a door. “Leave now, while you can. If you stay, I will consider you all property of GOD, to be used however I deem necessary.” He stops in the doorway. “Hudson, if these guys come back...”

“Call me,” I say.

Collins looks ready to clock me, but if everything Cole has just said is true, then we can’t be kept out of the loop. If I can make deals with demons, I can make deals with devils, too, especially if it means saving the human race, which at the moment contains a good number of people I care about.

“No one will stop you on the way out,” Cole says. “But you’re on your own now. The Tsuchi and Nemesis are your problems.”

“But the Tsuchi...” Endo starts.

“Is retreating northeast, I’m told.” He taps his earbud. “As is Nemesis.”

“Cole,” I say, stopping his exit. “You’ll leave us alone?”

He ponders this for a moment, and then says, “You don’t step on my toes, I won’t step on yours.”

Collins takes hold of my wrist. She doesn’t like bowing to evil men. She’d rather knock them senseless. “This is for the girls,” I say, and she loosens her grip. I turn back to Cole. “Done.”

He nods and steps toward the wall, pixelating and fading away, leaving us with the manipulators, invaders and potential destroyers of the human race. I stand there for a moment, looking at the bodies, feeling a powerful sense of impending doom...but that could have more to do with the Tsuchi above us and Nemesis closing in. Sometimes, this job sucks.

37

Back in the elevator, Collins, Maigo, Endo and I are all silent, digesting the unbelievable information Cole has just laid on us. How much of it is true and how much is speculation, or exaggeration, I don’t know, but one thing’s for certain, the FC-P is going to need a bigger budget. I turn to Endo. “How much of what he said do you believe?”

Endo answers without thought. “All of it.”

“Multiple races of aliens. The manipulation of the human race for thousands of years. At-
freaking
-lantis.”

“You say that like Atlantis is the strangest of all those revelations,” Collins says. “And I’m not sure why, but I believe him, too. Not that it excuses the way they have been preparing for the Aeros. And you—” She burrows into my skull with her eyes. “—you will not be collaborating with these people.”

As tempting as it is, I know she’s right. Becoming monsters to fight monsters has never been our style...if you ignore the fact that Lilly is a cat woman, Maigo has Kaiju strength and I once controlled a Kaiju by taking over its mind. Ignoring all that, our humanity is still intact. “Can we agree that milking them for information is acceptable? We still have no real idea what we’d be up against, should said invasion ever take place. For all we know, it might not happen for another hundred years. If the Aeros and Ferox have been duking it out for thousands of years, I doubt they operate on the same time scale as us. That they’re not here yet, ten years later, means it’s probably not a hop, skip and a jump through a wormhole or something.”

“Milk away, but don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” Collins says.

“That was one of the worst mixed metaphors I’ve ever heard,” Endo says.

Collins, Maigo and I all crane our heads toward him at once.

I shake my head. “Seriously, why does every asshole in the world think they can pal around with us?”

Endo stands grinning. “You’re easy targets.”

Collins and I are both surprised when Maigo lunges forward, picks Endo up by his chest armor and slams him against the elevator wall. “Not as easy as you.” The tone of her voice is dark and brooding. The creatures we saw, and the memories they conjured, must have deeply affected her.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Easy now. Maigo...”

“I won’t let them hurt you,” she says to me. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

The sentiment seems overly simple, but is familiar. It’s basically how Nemesis acted a year ago, when Maigo was still part of the monster. In response to my helping the creature exact revenge on Maigo’s murderous father, Maigo bonded to me. While our relationship has become a more complex father-daughter affair, today’s events have returned her protective nature to the surface.

Endo bows his head. “Apologies, Maigo. I meant no harm. It wounds me to know that I have upset you. I will respect your...parents from now on.”

While his apology sounds sincere, he definitely had to force the word ‘parents,’ and I can’t blame him. As much as he would like to have a relationship with the girl who was once Nemesis, she sees us, even though we’re not married—yet—as adoptive parents.

The elevator pings, and the doors slide open. Guns are thrust in our faces. We nearly spring into action, but Lilly stumbles into the elevator, throwing up her hands, a sharp-toothed smile on her face. “My peeps!”

Guns are lowered. Hawkins, looking like he went a few rounds with a Ferox, steps into the elevator. He’s followed by Alessi and Woodstock.

“Going the hell up,” Woodstock says.

“I heard Silhouette caught up with you?” I ask Hawkins.

“A few minutes before he caught up with the Devil,” he replies, dead serious.

The mood in the elevator is heavy and serious, but then Lilly does an exaggerated Hawkins impression, “‘A few minutes before he caught up with the Devil.’” She starts laughing, breaking the tension, and we all join in. Even Maigo, who finally lets go of Endo.

The elevator pings.

The doors open.

Our laughter stops.

The elevator has risen up into an empty space that used to be hidden by a small building, which is now just rubble around us. And beyond the rubble...is an unimaginable field of black death. The charring covering everything, from the steaming tarmac, to the smoldering buildings, to the hundreds of small, smoking heaps that I think are bodies, tells me that the Tsuchi’s explosive membrane was ruptured. But without Nemesis lying on top of it, forcing the Tsuchi to absorb the brunt of the explosion, the Kaiju here was probably launched into the sky like a tossed coin.

I step out of the elevator and look to the northeast, where Cole said the Tsuchi was headed. My flipped coin theory appears validated by the crumbling side of Bald Mountain, where the flipped Tsuchi, weighing fifty thousand tons, give or take ten thousand, must have landed on its back. A cloud of dust streaking into the distance reveals its course, just like Cole said, to the northeast.

So what’s to the northeast?

I run my thoughts over a mental map of the country. There is literally almost nothing between here and the Nevada border. A few roads here and there. Minimal people to worry about. It’s mostly arid, flat desert cut through by rugged mountainous terrain. My imaginary map continues northeast, crossing the border of Utah, following an imaginary path right to Salt Lake City, its surrounding suburbs and its millions of residents. If I’m right, the Tsuchi is still after food, but also moving away from Nemesis, who is also headed northeast in pursuit of it.

I turn around as the others step out of the elevator. The doors close behind them and the whole unit slides down into what used to be the floor.
That’s how it wasn’t destroyed.

“What now, bossman?” Woodstock asks, but he’s in no condition to do much of anything. The same goes for Lilly and Hawkins, though he’s not going to be happy to hear that. But I can tell by the way he’s standing, with the slap-happy Lilly actually helping to support his weight, that he took a serious beating. Vince Neil and crew were never this motley.

“We need transportation.” I turn my attention from my people to the surrounding area. It’s a wasteland.

“We have transportation,” Endo says, stepping out of what little remains of the blackened building. Alessi heads out with him, locking her arm in his and putting her head on his shoulder, just for a moment. The affection is brief, but it seems even someone like Endo can be loved, and that might be weirder than aliens... A smile slips onto my face. There
are
aliens at Area 51! The nerds would be so happy to find out, though they might not sleep again if they knew the details.

I follow Endo with the rest, and for a moment, I think he’s lost his mind. Stretching out before us is a mile long circle of black. Beyond it is desert, and then mountains, and then nothing. But something emerges from the black as my perspective changes. There’s something there. Something resting on it. When we’re standing beneath the blackened form of the X-35, I ask, “How?”

“The X-35 isn’t just designed to replace helicopters and fighter jets,” Endo says. He looks up at the blue sky above.

“No,” I say. “Are you kidding me? This thing can fly in space?”

“It survived the blast because it’s designed to exit and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. Given what we just learned, is it really that surprising that we’d be developing a fighter capable of space travel?”

I reach up and rub the blackened hull. The char rubs away, revealing the unharmed, shiny surface beneath.

“Slap my ass and call me Sally,” Woodstock says. “Can we keep it?”

I lock eyes with Endo, suspecting he might have his own plans for the X-35. Oddly, he acquiesces with a nod. I turn to Woodstock. “Woodstock, meet Future Betty.”

Woodstock gives a whoop as Endo lowers the cargo bay ramp.

We quickly board the vehicle, and I let Woodstock take the cockpit seat so he can watch and learn how Endo pilots the craft. Once everyone buckles up, Endo pulls the X-35 up to a height of just fifty feet, and hovers. “Where to?”

“Cheeseburgers!” Lilly says.

As hungry as I am, a burger joint is still third on my list of potential destinations. The first, most obvious target is the Tsuchi. I look Lilly over. She’s clad in black like the rest of us, but the black covering her is natural fur. The uniform and the bacteria bomb are missing. I nearly ask, but the answer is obvious; when Lilly was patched up, the bomb was removed along with her clothing, and while getting beat up by Silhouette, Hawkins hadn’t thought to bring it. So there goes that strategy.

“Any ideas?” I ask.

“The Tsuchi’s destination is most likely Salt Lake City,” Alessi says, accessing the X-35’s wall screen system with such fluency that it’s clear she’s had inside information from Endo.

“It will take time to get there,” Collins says. “Time enough to evacuate at least some of the population.”

People will die in the ensuing panic-filled evacuation, too, but Collins’s plan reveals she holds no hope of actually stopping the Tsuchi’s progress. And that’s discouraging, because what good are we? Without weapons developed by people like Cole, we’re basically lucking our way through these messes.

Alessi scrolls through several streams of information displayed on the screen. “If the Tsuchi moves in a straight line between here and Salt Lake, it’s just over three hundred miles. With a top speed over a hundred miles per hour, it won’t be that long before the Tsuchi arrives.”

Lilly giggles, but says nothing. Whatever drugs she was given seem to be wearing off some.

“What about Nemesis?” I ask.

Alessi taps and swipes her way to the information. Live aerial footage of Nemesis charging across a group of large green circles in the middle of a desert appears. The label at the bottom of the news feed identifies the location as Oasis, California. “Oasis is four hundred miles from Salt Lake in a straight shot. With a similar top speed, Nemesis is just an hour behind the Tsuchi. If it stops in Salt Lake, there’s a good chance she’ll catch it there.”

“So, best case scenario, Nemesis takes care of our pest problem.”

Lilly giggles again.

Maigo loses her patience. “What’s so funny!”

“Nemmy has tentacles.”

I’m about to write her off and keep working on our futile plan, but then she adds, “On her head. She tried to hug me. Wanted to pull me into her hole.” She cracks up a little, laughing, but I’m not. I unbuckle and kneel in front of Lilly. She’s still drugged, but trying to tell us something. I lift her face so her yellow eyes are looking at me.

“What did the hole look like?”

She blinks hard twice. “Like...a peapod...on the back of her neck. They just wanted a hug. Just a little hug. I think she’s lonely.” Lilly puts her hand on Maigo’s knee. “She misses you, Maig. Think she wants you back...or whoever is convenient, I guess...whoever gets too close. Almost got me, but I don’t swing that way.” She laughs again. “Sorry, Nems, I don’t like you that way.”

I look at Maigo, whose face shows an inner conflict. “Not a chance.”

“But if it could save people, we have to—”

“
Not
going to happen.”

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” Maigo argues. “Save people?”

“I’m not going to sacrifice you,” I say. “I’m not going to give you back. You don’t deserve—”

“It’s not up to you,” she says. “Nemesis is part of me. She’s in my head. And I’m still part of her. I hate it. It sucks. But I might be able to steer her. Guide her. Without me, she’s just a monster. I can give her a conscience again.”

We stare at each other for a moment. Then I stand and sit back down, calmly buckling myself in. I turn to Collins. “Get in touch with Watson and Cooper. I want them coordinating a staggered evacuation, starting with everyone southwest of Salt Lake. Send them east. Then work their way up, moving people in every direction except for southwest.”