Project Nemesis (A Kaiju Thriller) (4 page)

4

“Dr. Elliot, wake up.”

Dr. Kendra Elliot had never been a graceful sleeper. She snored. She drooled. And she always, always woke up grumpy. But today, her fury at being woken was quickly consumed by confusion. She wasn’t in bed. She was in the lab. And it was a voice that had woken her, not her alarm.

General Gordon’s voice.

He stood next to her, a grin on his face.

She mistook the smile as mockery and quickly checked herself over. Some of her hair had come loose, but most of it was still tied back. She wiped away the crust from her eyes and was happy to find her cheek free of moisture. All in all, she didn’t seem too out of sorts.

So why was Gordon smiling at her so queerly?

When she couldn’t take it anymore, she asked, “What?”

He raised an eyebrow at her.
His signature expression.
No one really understood how he got the eyebrow so high on his forehead, but everyone knew what it meant. You missed something obvious, which wasn’t always true. Sometimes what Gordon considered obvious was a mystery to the rest of the world.

She looked behind her, half expecting to see Endo there, leveling a gun at her forehead, but all she saw was the curved back wall of the white lab. A row of computer stations and hardware lined the wall of the round room. Centrifuges, nucleic acid extraction systems, a fluorescent spectrophotometer, incubators, DNA hybridization ovens, heat and cooling baths, electron and florescent microscopes and a long freezer—everything required for a multitude of biological sciences. The long countertop stopped at a line of refrigerators with glass doors. The first five held carefully labeled samples. The sixth, lunch, though that fridge was nearly empty today.

I’m alone, she remembered.

And then she remembered why, and whipped her head around toward the lab’s centerpiece. She gasped, nearly falling from her chair.

“Yes,” Gordon said. “Magnificent.”

It wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Impossible came to mind first, and she was in the impossible business.

The center of the room was an artificial womb. While spherical in appearance, the top and bottom didn’t complete the eight-foot-diameter sphere. The bottom led to a filtration system that constantly sterilized the embryonic fluid that filled the womb, running it beneath a powerful UV light. The top of the sphere, which could only be reached from the floor above the lab, was the only way to access the inside. A black umbilical hung from the ceiling, coiling and twisting in the clear fluid, attached to the body that floated at the center of the womb. It served the same function as a normal umbilical cord, supplying the fetus with the nutrients and raw materials it needed to grow.

“How did you do it?” Gordon asked.

Elliot stood slowly and placed her hand against the glass. The fetus inside the womb was at least fifteen inches from head to toe. She glanced down to the touch-screen controls and tapped the black screen twice, waking it. The weight, measured by fluid displacement, showed 3.5 pounds. She shook her head.

Impossible.

“Kendra,” Gordon
said,
his voice insistent.
“How?”

Her eyes flicked to him, back to the baby girl she’d created, then back to Gordon. “I attached the DNA you supplied to a retroviral vector, which wasn’t as hard as it sounds, because we’re making a systemic change rather than targeting specific organs. The vector was injected into an embryo already in progress, to speed things along. It’s fast acting and has few side effects, so there was no danger to the embryo, but the end result was that
all of the
DNA, in every cell, was altered inside an hour. I had no idea what the effect would be, but I would have never guessed… Gordon, this—she—was barely four weeks along.”

“And now?”

She huffed, unable to believe the words coming out of her mouth.
“Seven months, at least.
It might survive if it was born.”

“If it doesn’t turn to sludge, you mean?”

She nodded.

“How long until we can extract the heart?”

“What time is it?”

Gordon looked at his wristwatch.
“Five-twenty.
A.M.”

Her eyes widened and this time she said it aloud. “Impossible.”

“What?”

“Gordon, I—”

“Stop calling me Gordon.”

She barely heard him, but spoke again, “General. I put the embryo in the womb at four-thirty.” She’d been sleeping for just over thirty minutes, but she’d never felt more awake. She opened the calculator via the touch screen and tapped furiously, speaking her equations as she worked them out. “It’s only been growing for fifty minutes. If we assume that it’s roughly thirty-two weeks along, minus the four weeks it had grown prior to the DNA insertion, that’s twenty-eight weeks of growth in fifty minutes. To make it
easy,
lets round up to one hour.”

General Gordon spoke, but she didn’t hear him.

“Twenty eight weeks is seven months. Divide sixty minutes by seven. The fetus is growing a month every eight point—let’s round to nine minutes. A year’s growth takes one hundred eight minutes, or one hour and forty-eight minutes.”

“Going to round that to two hours?” Gordon asked.

“Actually, yes.”
She glanced up and saw the dubious look in his eyes. “This is hardly science at this point. Best I can offer is a guess, but by the time I figure out exact numbers, the growth rate might have changed.”

He nodded. The answer was acceptable.

“Two hours for every year of growth,” she said. “If we take this out to twenty-one years, just to be sure that the organs have fully matured...we’ll have a fully grown fetus—a woman—in forty two hours.”

Elliot plopped down in her chair like she’d just finished running a marathon. She smiled wide and looked up at Gordon feeling true excitement for the first time since she ended her father’s life. “This changes everything.”

“Yes,” Gordon said. “Yes, it does.”

Elliot turned back to the fetus. She felt if she watched closely enough she should be able to see it actually growing.

“But,” Gordon said.

She turned back toward him.

“Why did you use a female embryo?”

She knew the reason for the question. “Don’t worry, General. Female hearts are generally smaller than male hearts, but I chose the fetus genetically predisposed to have the strongest heart. It just turned out to be female.”

“Who is she?”

“The DNA donor?”

He nodded.

“A girl, sir.
From Mass General Hospital in Boston.
Strange name.
Maigo
.
Japanese, I think.”
BioLance
had been using DNA gathered from transplantation waiting lists around the country. The moment they managed to grow a viable organ, one of those people would get a brand new kidney, liver, heart,
lung
, whatever. And since the new organ, made healthy through genetic tinkering, would be grown from the recipient’s own DNA, there would be no risk of rejection. No drugs required. No side effects. Elliot saw it as a chance for redemption. She didn’t really regret killing her father, but if there was a God, maybe He could forgive the act if she managed to save millions of lives. Of course, she might also piss Him off by keeping Him from claiming people when He wanted to. “
Maigo
,” she said again, pronouncing the name my-go. “She was waiting for a liver.”

“Was?” he
asked.

“She died last week. Gunshot wound. Blood loss, and a concussion from falling onto a tile floor, left her in a coma and needing a transplant. Her...father is a suspect, but hasn’t been arrested because of lack of
evid
—”

“I don’t need the details,” Gordon said. He pursed his lips for a moment, staring at the floor. Then he clucked his tongue and turned around, heading for the door.

“Sir?” she called after him.

He paused, but didn’t turn around. “You should know. I also modified the DNA...with your own.”

This spun him around.

“You did what?” Both eyebrows were raised. This was a new expression—genuine surprise.

“The heart,” she said, squeezing her hands together. “It’s for you?”

He just stared at her.

“Your body won’t reject it. By this time next week, you’ll feel twenty years younger. You won’t need to take any meds.”

He regarded her for another moment,
then
spoke. “Kendra, if this works out, you won’t have to look over your shoulder for Endo ever again. And I might just take you up on your earlier offer.”

She grinned, hoping the General was just joking. But he never joked, which made his departing words so much more horrible.

“If it doesn’t work out, better that you don’t look over your shoulder. It’ll be easier for you that way.”

5

I wake with a groan. My head throbs with pain. I think my eyes have been plucked out until I reach up and rub them. Moving sucks. My body aches, every inch of it. I think I’m feeling pain in places I didn’t know existed. What the hell happened?

My eyes manage to open for a moment, before the pain doubles and I close them again. But I saw enough to remember where I am. The cabin’s faded blue, painted wood ceiling is hard to forget. The previous day’s adventures come back to me like a flip book in honey, which is to say, slowly.
The long drive.
The awful music.
The bear.
A stab of pain lances from my feet, up through my body and explodes out of my forehead. That
sonuvabitch
bear!

That’s why my body hurts. But it doesn’t explain the headache. Then I remember the rest of my day. With the bear gone, I got the power on and assessed the damage. They’d probably been staying in the cabin for just a few days, but they’re bears. Wild animals tend to be less tidy than people, even me. Although the bedroom and bathroom were unmolested, the bear family did a number on the living room and kitchen. Most of the damage was cosmetic, but there was enough baby bear shit on the floor to ruin my night, and the braided rug in the middle of the living room smelled like bear piss. I picked up the poop, broken glass, scattered pots and pans, and a deck of cards the cubs had been chewing on. I rolled up the braided rug, wincing at the smell, and dragged it outside. The backdoor, through which the bears had entered, hadn’t been damaged. Not by the bears, anyway. Judging by the rot setting in, whoever closed this place up for the winter, forgot to shut the back door. I closed the door, which had warped, but managed to get the deadbolt locked. By the time I finished, the place looked respectable again, but it was also 10 pm and the pain from the abuse I’d taken was starting to stiffen my joints.

The only source of entertainment in the cabin was an old radio, and I wasn’t about to turn that on. I’d had all the 80s jams I could take. So I sat back in one of the living room’s cushy rocking chairs, propped up my feet and cracked open a beer.

Then another.

And another.

And that’s pretty much where my memory ends. I somehow made it to the bed.
Must have been nearly midnight at that point.
And now, here I am, swimming in pain.

Three loud knocks ricochet through the inside of my head like bullets. I clutch my head and whine incoherently into the pillow. It’s not the bear. Bears don’t knock. Whoever it is can wait.

Three more booming knocks and I swear I’m in a war zone. I squeeze a pillow over my head lest I end up with post traumatic stress disorder. The knock comes again, louder, more persistent. I’m about to shout, “Go away,” when the person at the door beats me to the punch.

“
Willowdale
Police,” a woman says. Her voice is like a foghorn. “Is anyone there?”

No, I think. I’m not here.

Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
“I know you’re there, and I don’t have a whole lot to do today, so please, open the door.”

My eyes open against the pain. It’s dull in comparison to the agony this woman’s voice is causing me. I spin out of bed, onto my feet and nearly fall over. I catch myself in the doorframe. Am I still buzzed? I looked up into the living room. The morning light streaming through the windows feels like hot pokers in my eyes. I let them adjust for a moment,
then
notice the beer cans littering the floor by the rocking chair. I count them quickly. Eight empties.

Geez.

“
Willowdale
Police!” the woman shouts, punctuating the words with another volley of cannon fire. “Please open the door.”

“
Willowdale
,” I whisper to myself. Watson never gave me the name of the town, just directions.
Willowdale
is where the Sasquatch sightings have been reported. Lucky for me, I already have a mamma bear suspect. Maybe two suspects if the woman at the door is as brutish as she sounds.

I stumble to the door, pausing with a hand against the wall, trying to steady myself and clear my head. My arm feels weighted by a concrete block, but I manage to raise it and look at my watch. 5:30 A.M.
Sonofa
— .
Through the curtained window, I see a clenched fist rise up, ready to slam the door. I don’t think I could take a point-blank knock without toppling over in agony.

“I’m here!” I shout, grumpily unlocking the door and throwing it open. “Isn’t there a raccoon in a fence somewhere that you should be deal—
”

My eyes clear and I get a good look at the police officer standing on the front porch. “Holy.” I say it aloud, but manage not to voice the thought that accompanied the word. Did Watson send me a strip-o-cop? I quickly decide that’s not the case. This woman isn’t wearing make-up. She’s just naturally stunning. Her wavy orange hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Freckles fringe her high cheeks. And her eyes—they’re technically brown, but they’re so close to the color of her hair that they seem to glow.

Before I can ogle her tightly fitting uniform, and the curves beneath it, she says, “Looks like I have my Sasquatch suspect.”

I look for the bear, but don’t see it. She’s talking about me. I look down and find myself dressed only in black boxer-briefs. How did I not notice I wasn’t dressed? And why am I covered in streaks of mud and pine needles?

“We had some complaints.
Lots of hooting and hollering in the woods last night.
People around here are on a Sasquatch kick, but I don’t buy that, do you?”

All I can do is laugh, but that hurts, so it turns into a wince.

“You just pass gas?” the woman asks.

She catches me off guard. “What? No!”

“Made kind of a funny face,” she says. I look for a hidden grin, but she’s deadpan. “Been drinking, chief?”

“Chief?”

“Answer the question.”

I lean forward and read the name tag, careful not to glance below it more than once. “Listen, Officer Collins.”

“Sheriff Collins,” she corrects.

“Huh,” I say, a bit surprised. “Sheriff Collins, drinking in the privacy of your own home isn’t illegal.
Nor is getting shit-faced.”
Probably shouldn’t have said that last bit, but too late now.

“No,” she agrees with a snarky smile. “But running around the woods in your underwear, singing Dude Looks
Like
a Lady isn’t exactly in the privacy of your own home, is it? Neither is discharging a firearm.”

Damnit
.

“I wasn’t drinking when—”

Double
damnit
.
I just confirmed that I’m the one with the gun. That I was drinking isn’t really up for debate.

Her hand moves slowly toward the gun holstered on her hip. Most hung-over, still buzzed people wouldn’t notice, but I’m not your average drunk. Details like this are what I’m good at. But she needs to know I’m not a threat. “I’m DHS,” I say.

Her hand pauses, but doesn’t retreat. “You’re Department of Homeland Security?
Didn’t know they were having trouble recruiting people.”

I’m confused for a moment, but then I read between the lines and hear the unspoken jab about lowering standards.

“Ha. Ha,” I say. “I can get my badge.”

“Please do.”

As I turn to find my shorts, I catch sight of her hand unclip the sidearm. For a small town cop, she’s not taking any chances. Suppose that makes sense though, drunks with guns are never a good combination. And I’m a stranger. She probably knows everyone in town by name. Her next question confirms this.

“You a friend of the Watsons?”

“I work with Ted,” I say.

“Haven’t met him.”

“He’s Bill and Diane’s son,” I say from the bedroom where I find my cargo shorts. Bending over to pick up the shorts is agony, but I manage to grab them, slip them over my ankles and pull them up. I find my yellow T-shirt on the bed and pull it on, too. My maroon cap is on the nightstand. I feel momentarily embarrassed that super-babe officer saw my receding hairline, but then again, she saw me shirtless, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a bad thing. Despite my casual disposition, I keep in good shape.

“I said I hadn’t met him,” she says from the living room. “Not that I didn’t know who he was.”

I shake my head. I can’t decide if I like her smart-ass commentary or hate it. She’s still in the doorway when I return. I dig into my pocket, fish out my badge and flip it open like an old pro. She’s not impressed.

While inspecting the badge, she asks, “Why did you discharge your firearm Mister...” She reads my name from the badge. “...Hudson?”

“There was a bear,” I say.

“You realize this is not bear hunting season?”

“I didn’t shoot the bear. The back door was open. She was in here with a pair of cubs when I opened the door.”

I see a flicker of understanding in her eyes. If she lives out here, she knows how mamma bear reacted.

I point to the ruined screen door. “She knocked me through the door. Nearly took my head off.
Scratched the hell out of Betty.”

She stiffens. “You have a woman with you? Is she hurt?”

“No,” I say and then realize I really don’t want to tell this woman who Betty is, but I’ve got no choice. “Betty...is my truck.”

She steps back and turns to the truck. The claw marks are easy to see. “You named your truck, Betty?”

“I’m adorable, I know.”

“You’re weird is what you are.”

“How come you don’t have a Maine accent,” I ask, suddenly noticing she lacks the laconic drawl prevalent in Northern Maine.

She ignores the question. “What’s the P stand for?” She holds up my ID, which reads, Fusion Center – P beneath the big blocky DHS. “Fusion Centers are designated by cities, not letters.”

Triple
damnit
. Why does a backwoods cop know anything about the DHS? I consider making something up, but she’s probably wondering if the ID is a fake, so anything other than the ridiculous truth might land me in a jail cell, and I do not want my superiors bailing me out.

Still, I can’t quite bring myself to say the exact word. “Preternatural,” I say, hoping she has no idea what it means.

No such luck.

An honest grin emerges on her face. “Please tell me DHS isn’t investigating Sasquatch sightings.”

The depth of my frown matches her smile, but upside down. She laughs, but quickly squelches it by covering her mouth with her hand. “Well, Special Investigator Jon Hudson, you’ve arrived just in time. The Johnsons are my next stop and you’re going to want to talk to them.”

“I am?”

“Most of the sightings are reported by them.”

“I’m not really feeling up to it right now, thanks.”

“Look,” she says, a serious tone creeping back into her voice. “They’re just up the road, and I fielded at least five calls from them last night. Near as I can tell, you were the cause for all of them.”

“Last night?” I say.
“Kind of a slow response time.”

“They call a lot,” she admits.

“The boy who called Sasquatch,” I say.