Project 731 (15 page)

21

My relief at Nemesis taking action against the Tsuchi is short lived. The creature, while much smaller than Nemesis, is agile and lightning fast. I flinch when it leaps away, wraps its tail around the Kaiju’s arm and swings onto her wrist. “Oh, crap,” I say, when I see the thing’s tail jab Nemesis’s wrist three times.

Nemesis backhands her arm into what remains of the GOD building, and it comes away free of the Tsuchi, but the damage has already been done. The skin on Nemesis’s wrist bulges and then splits.

The massive Kaiju roars in pain, sending shockwaves through the air. The chopper shakes, but we’re far enough away now to not be in any real danger.

“Woodstock, hold us here,” I say, and the helicopter levels out to a smooth hover, the rotor blades almost silent in the regal interior. “Collins, get on Devine.” The Digital Vanguard Intelligence Network, designed to help us coordinate a response to Kaiju threats across all emergency channels, including the military, has been unused for the past year. “I want airstrikes on the—”

Two F-22s roar past. I’m about to ask how they got here so fast, and then I remember that we’re technically still on an Air Force base. The two jets, America’s most advanced 5th generation fighters, unload their full payloads. Between the two fighters, twenty-four missiles streak through the air.

My body tenses for a moment, as the white smoke trails seem to point toward Nemesis’s chest, but the missiles angle upwards, locked onto Nemesis’s head. While there is no threat of detonating one of Nemesis’s membranes, they’ve just guaranteed she’s going to be really pissed off, and with a city of 43,000 people within stomping distance, that seems like a really bad idea.

The missiles strike Nemesis in the side of her face, pitching her sideways as the cracking bulge on her wrist ruptures with bright red gore. She roars, sounding more angry than hurt.

Part of me wonders if the combination of modern military mixed with the Tsuchi assault might be enough to take Nemesis down for good, but I know that’s the wrong call. Small Tsuchi are a threat to the whole planet. I hate to think about what an army of giant Tsuchi could do.

I turn to Collins. “Tell them to target the Tsuchi! Not Nemesis!”

Collins has her smartphone to her ear. “They’re not going to know what Tsuchi are.”

“The spiders!” I shout, remembering their more descriptive name. “The big fucking spiders!” I see Alessi, sitting beside Collins, but looking past me, out the window, widen her eyes.

I turn back to the action in time to see Nemesis twist and arch her back in pain. But it’s not from the missiles. The smoke from those twelve strikes rolls away from her face, revealing no damage at all. The old girl is as tough as ever...if you ignore her wrist. As she bends back, Nemesis lifts the offending wrist up, letting out a sharp wail as her flesh bursts from the inside out.

Three new Tsuchi, smaller than the one that implanted them, tear out of the arm, twitching and shaking gore away from their bodies. Like the first, they’re much bigger than a normal Tsuchi, and even from this distance, I can see they share some attributes with Nemesis. These aren’t the spindly, turtle-shelled monsters I fought in Oregon. These are Nemesis-Tsuchi, having borrowed some of their DNA from the Kaiju.

How big will they get?

Nemesis reacts to the new creatures with her normal unhinged vengeance, slapping her massive hand down on the opposite wrist. All three Kaiju Tsuchi, still young and unfocussed, are crushed. A flash of light bursts from beneath the giant hand, and then, all at once, an explosion is released. Nemesis’s hands separate, unleashing the bright orange fluid contained in each new Tsuchi. The creatures are torn apart, along with what remains of the GOD building.

I avert my eyes from the brightness and hold on, as the shockwave shakes the chopper. When I look back, Nemesis stands alone, surrounded by a black, charred circle and a giant pile of rubble that used to be GOD. Beyond, I see what little remains of the mammoth hangar, inside of which are the mummified remains of a second Kaiju, similar to Nemesis, but thicker, even in death.

Nemesis Prime. I’ve never seen the body before. She’s uglier than I imagined.

“More F-22s are en route,” Collins says. “Targeting the Tsuchi. ETA thirty seconds.”

Then I see movement on the ground. A Tsuchi, larger than the first, scurries away, heading south. A second one, still larger, bolts east.

“Let them know there are three targets,” I tell her. “One engaging Nemesis, one headed south and one headed east. We need to intercept all three before they reach civilization.” A map of the region pops into my head. Downtown Lompoc is seventeen miles away by car, but that’s via a long winding route. To a giant Tsuchi, able to run right over the tall hills separating us from the town, that distance would be cut in half. “Priority should be given to the Tsuchi headed east!”

Nemesis, turns south, clearly intending to give chase, despite the obvious speed advantage the Tsuchi have, but she doesn’t make it more than a step.

The charred corpse of the GOD building bursts open, and the first Tsuchi, the smallest and boldest of the three giant spiders, leaps onto Nemesis’s back and scurries up, working its way through the double sets of towering spikes. Nemesis reacts quickly, spinning in circles, leveling the area with her long, trident tipped tail, trying to reach the Tsuchi.

The giant spider stops at Nemesis’s shoulder, clinging with all eight legs. Nemesis tries to bite the thing, but can’t reach it. As she lifts her hand to crush it, like she did the others, the Tsuchi strikes with its tail, three times. But the syringe-like stinger can’t pierce the armor on the Kaiju’s shoulder.

Nemesis’s big hand hits hard, but there’s no explosion. The agile Tsuchi suddenly appears on the far shoulder, striking with its tail again, to no effect. Then it’s gone, and faster than seems possible, it’s atop Nemesis’s head.

In a flash, I see how this could all end. Three new Tsuchi, bursting from Nemesis’s head, destroying her brain and forever killing the Kaiju.

Before Nemesis’s raised hand can crash down on her own head, the Tsuchi does something new. It bites down. Blue arcs of electricity spark between the two mandibles. The charge can’t be enough to incapacitate the much larger Nemesis, but it does make her flinch long enough for the Tsuchi to raise its tail, ready to strike.

It never gets the chance. A lone missile streaks in from the south, striking the Tsuchi. The armored spider spins away through the air, its legs like the spokes of a bike wheel, spinning madly.

Before the Tsuchi hits the ground, a line of white web streaks from its backside and strikes Nemesis’s wrist, just below the fresh wound, which appears to have been cauterized by the explosive end of the three newborn Tsuchis. The spinning Tsuchi’s fall is turned into a swing, bringing it around toward Nemesis’s back. The BFS’s legs splay wide, ready to land. Its tail arches and twitches, ready to strike.

But the Tsuchi fails to hit its mark. Nemesis’s large but fast tail swings around and strikes the Tsuchi like a baseball bat hitting a golf ball. The impact’s force snaps the web line and sends the now limp Tsuchi sailing—toward us.

Woodstock angles the chopper to the right, pulling us out over the ocean. The Tsuchi falls short of striking us, landing on the ground and rolling several hundred feet, stopping just before toppling over a cliff, into the ocean.

“Pulling back,” Woodstock announces. Since Nemesis is charging in our direction, I offer no complaint. She roars at us, perhaps seeing the chopper as a threat now, or maybe as competition for her prize, but when we’re far enough away, she ignores us and turns her full attention back to the now twitching Tsuchi.

Nemesis leans over the creature, and with surprising gentleness and accuracy, places one of her colossal claws on the Tsuchi’s underside. The pinned spider flails, its tail stabbing at the claw but ricocheting away. While the Tsuchi goes ballistic, Nemesis reaches down with her free hand and with a quick flick of her finger, she severs the tail, effectively castrating the thing.

The Tsuchi’s legs go rigid with shock for a moment, but then it starts twitching again. Nemesis reaches down, and one by one, she flicks off the spider’s eight legs, which continue to twitch, despite being separated from the body.

My stomach sours. As much as the Tsuchi hurt Nemesis, and needs to be destroyed, this kind of torture is new for Nemesis. She generally dispatches her foes with brutal efficiency, preferring to silence the cries for vengeance as quickly as possible. This behavior is...sadistic.

Whatever fondness I have for the monster fades away. Everything good about her is now living on the other side of the country, as a teenage girl named Maigo. This Nemesis is, I think, closer to her pure, goddess of vengeance self. We’re getting a taste of old-school Nemesis now, seeing her the way our ancestors might have, the way some alien race designed her to be.

Lacking any appendages, the Tsuchi is now motionless. Its mandibles open and close slowly, but the creature isn’t going anywhere...unless it regenerates like Nemesis. But the giant Kaiju has no intention of allowing the Tsuchi to live.

“Further away!” I shout, as Nemesis brings both hands up and links them together.

The helicopter’s engine whines as we’re lifted up and further away.

The first explosion to rock the area is created by Nemesis’s fists slamming down atop the Tsuchi. The legless spider is instantly pulverized, along with a hundred feet of cliff face. The second explosion happens when Nemesis lifts her fists, exposing the Tsuchi’s ruptured membranes to the air.

While a normal explosion of this kind is a horrible thing, from the force and from the nearly nuclear temperatures generated by the blast—the most powerful non-nuclear explosion known to man—this one is compounded by the fact that it originates from within a crumbled cliff. Much of the stone is pulverized to dust by the blast, but just as much is tossed into the air, some of it baseball sized, some of it the size of a car.

Lucky for us, gravity tugs those large boulders down fast. Unlucky for us, those baseball-sized stones beat the tar out of our helicopter. Woodstock pulls some impressive maneuvers in an attempt to avoid the wave of debris, but before my stomach stops flip-flopping from whatever it is he did, I hear emergency alarms.

“Buckle up!” Woodstock shouts. “We’re going down!”

While Collins calls in a mayday over Devine, I look out the window. Below is the bold blue ocean. Straight ahead are Nemesis’s eyes, watching us drop past her. A year ago, still influenced by Maigo’s connection to me, the Kaiju might have reached out and caught us. Now the brute just watches us fall. And then, as we pass by, she turns and steps into the ocean, leaving us to our fate and leaving the two remaining Tsuchi to do whatever it is they’re going to do.

For a moment, I think Woodstock is going to pull us out of the fall. I hear the rotor spin faster for a moment, and my ass is squeezed into the seat. But then a jarring impact shakes us from below, and the setting sun is blotted out by the Pacific Ocean, which in this part of the world is thousands of feet deep.

22

Nemesis stands before me, blazing orange eyes staring down, dwarfing me. Judging me. And finding me wanting. I turn to run, but it’s useless. Not only can she outpace me, the way I might outpace an ant, but I’m on a rooftop, and this time without a wing suit or a parachute to carry me away. So I turn to face her.

Die with a little dignity, Jon
.

The wet sluicing of shredding flesh fills the air, accompanied by a pungent smell—fish and blood. Nemesis arches her back, flexing her chest outward. The back skin stretches and splits. The process repeats all over her body. The greatest molting on Earth.

She tears at the stuff, leveling apartment buildings with each discarded, airplane-sized hunk of thick skin. Beneath it, a glorious white form emerges, in some ways more hideous, more defined, almost skeletal in appearance. The transformation completes as two massive wings, incapable of flight, unfurl and put the city behind her in shadow.

Where am I?
I wonder. The city is both familiar, but not.

The rising sun warms my back, casting a long shadow on the metal rooftop. The light is caught by millions of glittering diamonds—what we call Nemesis’s feathers—which are highly reflective sheets capable of focusing the sun’s light into an intensely powerful energy beam. But just once, so it’s reserved for the worst of the worst.

In this case, for me.

But what did I do?

What crime have I committed?

As the wings curl, flecks of light dance around the rooftop, racing toward the center and merging with a growing spotlight centered on me. I can already feel the heat. When it happens, the intensity will be so fast and focused that I’ll be vaporized, along with everything behind me.

Nemesis roars in victory, the focus nearly attained.

And then it’s blocked.

Someone is standing in front of me. Taking my place. I recognize the silhouette.

“Maigo, no!”

I launch to
my feet, oblivious to the tug on my arm until it stings. I glance down, breathing hard, coming out of the nightmare. An IV needle twists in my arm. I yank it away, stumbling back onto the bed. Dazed and confused in a non-Matthew McConaughey fun way, I search the room for clues about my location.

There’s no window. No mirror. No cabinets or counters. Definitely not a hospital. The medical equipment beside the flat, normal looking bed is nominal: an IV bag and a heart monitor, which is still beeping away, rather fast. I glance down at my hand and pull the heart monitor clip from my finger. The beep becomes a droning squeal, announcing my death. And yet, no one comes running.

It’s an illusion
, I think. Someone is trying to make me think I’m being cared for.
But is it totally?
I reach up and touch my aching head. Instead of my beanie cap, I find a bandage. The last thing I remember is hitting the water...and my head? And then water rushing up over the helicopter. Everything after that is...nothing. I passed out.

Or I died.

Which would make this what? Hell? Purgatory? I’m not arrogant enough to assume I’d be quickly spirited away to the pearly gates. “Hello?” I say to the ceiling. “Anybody there? God? Steve Jobs? Mother Teresa? Uh...Bazuzal?”

Nothing. I figured that if a human being was listening in, that might get a response. Of course, if I
am
dead and it
is
God listening, does the guy even talk to people anymore? And if so, how? There isn’t even a bush to burn in the room.

My next observation is an embarrassing one. I’m buck naked. And there aren’t any clothes or even a johnny in the room. “Looks like it’s time to go Roman,” I say to myself. “Senator style, not Olympian.”

I pull the top sheet off the bed and wrap it around my body like a toga. I feel ridiculous, but this is as good as it’s going to get. I head for the door and open it, jumping back with a start, because of the proximity of the person on the other side. “Holy geez, Ash.”

“Like your outfit,” Collins says, lowering the hand she was about to use to knock on my door.

I look her up and down, noticing her own sheet turned toga. “Et tu Brute?”

“That makes no sense.”

I shrug. “We’re a regular Grumio and Metella.”

“A what?”

“Look it up.”

“I think you should lie back down,” she says, looking honestly concerned. “You hit your head pretty hard.”

I half take her advice and sit down on the bed. “What happened? After we crashed.”

Collins scours the room, no doubt looking for clues about where we are. “You were knocked unconscious. Woodstock, too.”

“Is he okay?”

“I haven’t seen him. This was the first room I tried. I was next door. But he was alive last time I saw him. In bad shape, though. Bleeding a lot. Broken bones. Alessi got him to the surface, while I dragged your sorry ass up. A chopper pulled us out a few minutes later. Unmarked. Black.” The kind government agents know to avoid because they’re the kind we use. “Last thing I remember was a needle going into my neck.” She moves her curly red hair aside, revealing a small needle puncture with bruising around it. Whoever jabbed her hadn’t been gentle.

I feel my neck for a needle wound, but there’s nothing. I was out cold already.

“What about Nemesis?” I ask.

“Out to sea.”

“And the Tsuchi?”

“I didn’t see them again.”

I push myself back up, head spinning a little, but I steady myself, set my resolve on ludicrous and head for the door. “Let’s get some answers.”

The hallway beyond is white, like the room. Bland and featureless. Linoleum floors.
The hell is this place?
I stop at the door next to mine and glance in.

“That was my room,” Collins says.

It’s identical to mine. I move to the next door and try the handle. It’s locked. The next three doors I try have the same result. We turn a corner and we’re faced with an open door. Beyond it, darkness.

“Feeling a little like a mouse in a maze,” I say. “And I don’t think we’ll get cheese at the end.”

Collins steps around me and into the dark. “If they wanted us dead, we would be already.”

“You don’t always have to be braver than me, you know.” I follow her in. Lights in the ceiling click and blink to life, illuminating a rectangular room. Three of the walls are mirrored, reflecting endless duplicates of each other. The effect is nauseating.

With a hydraulic hiss, the door behind us closes and locks. Aside from the door, the room is featureless. No furniture. No outlets. Just a ceiling full of long light bulbs and the same white linoleum floor.

I turn my attention to Collins, focusing on her instead of the mirrors.

“So,” she says. “Planning to propose, are you?”

“
What?
Really? Now?”

She shrugs. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You know at least one of these walls is one-way glass, right? We’re being watched.”

She looks at our refection. “Everything about this place is designed to make us uncomfortable. To keep us off balance. I’m saying, let’s find some balance.”

Her eyes lock mine in place. The intensity of her gaze would be enough to make most men look away. I just get lost in them. “Fine. Yes. I’m working on it.”

“Nothing big, I hope,” she says. “No song and dance, or in front of a crowd or a ring in a muffin.”

I hold my breath. While I haven’t decided anything yet, I was feeling some pressure, like a lot of guys do, I suppose, to come up with something grand as a demonstration of my love. I might not put a video of it on Facebook, making a spectacle of our relationship, but I did think something...grand...was expected these days.

“Just...ask. Okay? When you’re ready.”

I feel a weight I didn’t know was there fall away. First because she’s removed all the social pressure, which is liberating, and second because she’s basically indicated what her answer will be. She
wants
me to ask. She’s going to say
yes
. My eyes widen just a touch.

Collins puts her hand on my chest and quickly says, “But not now.”

“Right,” I say, waving my hand in the air, overdoing my denial. “Pssh, I wasn’t... Totally. I—”

“Okay,” a man’s voice booms from some unseen speaker. “I get it. You’re unfazed by your surroundings. Congratulations.”

The man sounds annoyed and maybe a little revolted by our romantic talk.

“Now,” the man says, “turn around and look at the mess you’ve made.”

Collins and I both turn around. The mirrored wall has gone clear, revealing a city in ruins. It’s night, but the crumbling city is lit by a number of fires. I step toward the wall of glass, looking down. The destruction ends a block away, but stretches from one end of the city to another. Amid all the chaos, I see people.

Bodies.

They litter the street. But not one of them is whole. I’ve seen this before. When Nemesis first escaped Maine. She went on a rampage, but not for the joy of destruction. She was feasting, on people, to fuel her rapid growth. But this wasn’t Nemesis, and we’re not in Maine. This was a Tsuchi. We’re looking at what remains of Lompoc, California.

“It ate them,” I say. “It’s growing.”

“Yes,” the man says. “
They
are.”