Project 731 (20 page)

31

“Pull up!” I shout to Silhouette, but it’s not really necessary. I’ve taken Obsidian’s place in the cockpit, so my view of the building toppling toward the X-35’s front end is the same as his. The towering building is mirrored glass from top to bottom, topped with a giant Deloitte & Touche logo, that’s now peeling away, one letter at a time. When all but the first and last five letters fall away, I nearly laugh, but then I catch our reflection in the windows. “Faster!”

“Everyone hold on!” Silhouette says.

The shifting reflection of the falling building is dizzying. For a moment, there is sky, then the distant city and then the destruction below. And then, in a sudden tunneling of my vision and crushing force against my chest, it all slides away.

I’m nearly unconscious by the time the X-35 comes to a halt. In seconds, we’ve traveled miles. Adrenaline fuels my pounding heart, returning blood to my brain. “Take us higher. I want to see.”

We rise up steadily, and the view of a mostly flattened and smoldering downtown Los Angeles comes into view. The fleet of C-130s can be seen far below, disgorging their contents, not on the fires, but on the dead Tsuchi to prevent the bacteria bomb from spreading.

I look back at the group. Collins is tending to the stranger dressed like a janitor. Hawkins is leaning over Lilly, and he notices my attention. “She’s hurt pretty bad. Going to need a hospital.”

“We’ll get her taken care of,” Silhouette says.

Hawkins looks ready to dive into the cockpit and start throwing punches. “The hell you will.”

“Look,” the now teamless BlackGuard leader says, “I saw what she did down there. Despite our actions against your people, she tried to save my man. That counts for a lot with me. I won’t let them take her, even if Cole orders me to. You have my word.”

“Aww, look at that, Hawkins,” I say, “you have your very own frenemy.” I glance toward Endo, who is still seated, paying me no attention, eyes out the front window...or projection. Whatever they’re called. “Isn’t it fun?”

“She’s rising,” Endo says, his voice a reverent whisper. He stands up and moves behind Silhouette, watching.

Maigo steps around the group, standing beside Endo, her face grim.

“She’s too strong for them,” Endo says to her. “She will not be defeated.”

I’m not sure if he’s just being hopeful or honestly confident that the bacteria bomb, which clearly worked against the Tsuchi, won’t be effective against Nemesis. But we’re going to find out soon enough, and I’m undecided about which outcome I’m hoping for. The same cannot be said for Endo and Maigo, who watch the unfolding scene like Red Sox fans do the last pitch of the final game in a tied World Series.

“There!” Endo says, pointing to the heap of destroyed skyscrapers lying over each other. The mound of crushed buildings rises, splits and then gives birth to Nemesis.

She stands slowly, shedding building remnants as she rises, getting to her feet and then shaking off Los Angeles like a wet dog. Beneath her is a charred swath of city and the crispy remains of the Tsuchi, recognizable only because its layers of armor are somewhat intact.

On her feet, Nemesis turns her head skyward and lets out a bellowing roar, looking more powerful than ever, as if the battle, instead of wearing her down, has only stoked the fires within her. She kicks her way free of the wreckage and surveys the area. Apparently satisfied, she turns first to the coast, and then inland, to the northeast.

Toward the second Tsuchi.

She takes one step to the north, which will take her through countless, densely populated cities, many of which have already been ravaged by the Tsuchi.

But then she stops, looking stunned. She turns her head back and forth, like someone who’s just been tapped on the shoulder, but doesn’t know by whom. And then the big Kaiju flinches, snapping her head back and roaring in pain.

At that same moment, Maigo winces and grabs her head, falling to her knees. The connection then projects to me as a dull headache.

“It’s burning her,” Maigo says.

Nemesis stumbles out of downtown, headed east now, toward the coast. She rakes at her head with the big claws, tears at her thick skin, no doubt removing the bacteria bomb in the process, but not the bacteria. It’s too late. It’s eating through her several feet of skin and will soon reach her brain.

Maigo closes her eyes and lowers her head. For a moment, I think she’s simply calming herself, but then I hear her gently whisper, “Run...run!”

And Nemesis does. I’m not sure whether Maigo actually managed to issue a command, or a suggestion, or if she still knows how Nemesis thinks, but the monsters runs.

Straight for the ocean.

For salt water.

Entire blocks of Inglewood neighborhoods are flattened.

How many people is she killing this time?

“She can save people, too,” Maigo says to me, once again knowing my thoughts. “From things that no one else can.”

“Killing thousands to save millions?” I say. “You think that’s okay?”

“What if it’s billions?”

I have no argument for that. The old Star Trek ‘Needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few,’ is a logical statement. But what good is logic, and saving lives, if you have to sacrifice your soul to do it? There are people dying below us. Children. Where is the justice in that? Who will take revenge on Nemesis for the death and pain she causes?

Just two miles from the ocean, skirting the edge of LAX, she flinches, roars and catches her foot on the swirling overpasses where the 405 and 110 freeways intersect. Nemesis stumbles, falls and rolls, leveling the Airport Courthouse building and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Is that it? Is she down?

“Get up,” Maigo whispers, tears in her eyes. “You’re almost there.”

Once again, the monster seems to hear her words. Nemesis stands, stumbling to the side, her mind feeling the first effects of a bacterial assault. Then she’s up and moving again, headed toward the now nearby coastline.

From our position high above, I can see what lies ahead. The neighborhoods come to an end, which is a good thing, but in their place is a treeless path of earth absolutely covered in massive, white oil tanks. “What is
that?
”

“Chevron refinery,” Endo says.

I’m torn by indecision. If we let her go through the refinery, we’re going to have an ecological disaster on our hands, at best. At worst, the place will go up in flames and take half of the city with it, maybe more. But if we can somehow force Nemesis around the refinery, she’ll be once again storming through neighborhoods.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Silhouette says, ending my silent debate. He’s right. There are no weapons on board that she’ll even feel. We just need to hope the bacteria does its job in time.

But it’s clearly not. While Nemesis’s gait is awkward and stumbling, she never slows her pace or trajectory. She reaches the refinery, crashing through a field of oil tanks. One by one, they rupture and disgorge their contents like thick, huge, milk cartons full of black milk.

But nothing explodes.

That is, until the squadron of Air Force jets I called in when this began decides to take matters into their own hands. I see a group of five swoop around, heading for Nemesis. I call back to Collins, “Call the Air Force off! There’s no—”

“Too late,” Silhouette says, and the seatbelt digs into my chest as we rapidly decelerate.

Missiles streak out from the array of jets. The pilots are no doubt locals, or have lived in the area long enough to feel an affinity for it. Whatever the case may be, their bleeding hearts have led them astray.

As we decelerate to a stop, the missiles close the distance to Nemesis as she nears the far end of the refinery, and the coast just a beach beyond that. I take Maigo’s arm. She snaps out of a trance-like state and looks up at me. “Buckle up! Everyone buckle up!”

She leaps back into her seat, and I’m relieved to see that Lilly, still unconscious, is buckled in next to Hawkins, and the stranger next to Collins, all ready for what’s about to happen. I turn to Silhouette. “Mach 6, huh?”

He nods, punching buttons. “I’m setting the autopilot to disengage in sixty seconds. Any more than that and we’ll be paste.”

“Sounds fantastic. DARPA should open an amusement park.” The missiles are seconds away from Nemesis, who is coated in oil and standing in the world’s largest oil spill, surrounded by how many gallons of oil? Millions? More? Whatever the case may be, in a few seconds it will all be gone. “Better hurry.”

The missiles make contact, the first few striking Nemesis’s back, doing her no damage, but setting the oil coating her on fire. The flames streak down her back, but will they reach the refinery before she reaches the ocean?

I root for her, hoping she’ll make it three more long steps to the water before the fire streaking down her back reaches the ground. And then, in a flash, it doesn’t matter. A missile strikes and breaches one of the bright orange membranes, unleashing a force equivalent to a small nuclear strike. I catch a glimpse of light, Nemesis sprawling sideways, the oil refinery going up at once, and then, as quick as I can snap my fingers, it all shrinks away, growing smaller, and then dimmer, until there’s nothing left but darkness and the sweet relief of unconsciousness.

32

My senses return slowly, starting as a prickling in my toes and working upward as the blood flow in my body normalizes. The pins and needles stabbing my limbs wakes my mind. I open my eyes to a view of what used to be El Segundo and Manhattan Beach. The area is a smoldering ruin. A two-mile-wide black circle of earth surrounds the decimated refinery, of which there is now no trace. At the fringe of the circle is an ever-widening ring of fire, eating through neighborhoods, fueled by the ocean breeze.

I turn my attention to the now-glass beach just beyond the refinery. The burned black circle ends at the water, which is slick with burning oil, but nothing else.

“She’s gone,” Endo says.

I turn to find him sitting beside me in the cockpit. A glance back reveals Silhouette in the back, buckled in, gagged and bound at the wrists and ankles. Despite being stripped of his uniform, dressed only in black boxer briefs and a black T-shirt, he’s sitting calmly. Biding his time.

Endo glances back. “We can’t trust him.”

“I don’t trust
you
.” I look at the others. Hawkins and Collins are starting to stir. Lilly and the janitor are out cold. Maigo is wide awake, looking past us, out the front window. “Maigo.”

Her eyes snap toward me.

“You okay?”

“She almost died,” the girl says. “You almost killed her.”

I’ve got nothing to say to that. It’s true. And I understand how she feels. There was a time when I wanted to save the monster, despite the destruction she wrought, but that was when Maigo was still a part of the monster. Now, Nemesis is just...Nemesis, an ancient and alien goddess of vengeance who cares nothing for the people she crushes underfoot.

I turn to Endo. “What now? I’m assuming you have a plan, since you’ve hijacked our ride.”

Endo works the controls, and the X-35 pulls up and away from the carnage. “Emergency services are doing what they can here. DARPA’s C-130s dumped their payloads on the city, but are being reloaded to help stop the fire.” That he knows and addresses my concerns before giving an answer irks me. I don’t like being known by this man. He sets his eyes on me. “
We
are going to get our people back.”

He spins us around and accelerates, but not so fast that I need to put on the mask.

“And how do you intend to do that? Fly into Area 51, waltz inside like we own the place, maybe with Hawkins as a prisoner, and stroll back out with Alessi and Woodstock?”

He smiles and points at Silhouette’s uniform resting on the floor behind us. That’s exactly what he plans to do. “Seriously? We’re borrowing rescue plans from Star Wars now?”

“We even have a furry prisoner to take with us,” Endo says. “We can have her wounds tended to before leaving.”

I stare at him, confounded. Area 51, while no longer a big secret, is still a heavily guarded military base in the middle of nowhere, and apparently one of many installations where DARPA, or perhaps just GOD, operates. Even dressed as Silhouette, I don’t think we’ll make it past the tarmac.

He must sense my impending line of questioning, because he says, “We are going to be the least of their worries.” I wait for the punch line, and he delivers it. “The second Tsuchi spent the night charging northeast, through California and into Nevada. It was last reported in Pahrump, just fifty miles from Vegas.”

“Geez,” I say. Vegas’s population is just over six hundred thousand, but tops out at two million if you count the surrounding suburbs. It’s potentially double that if you count the tourists. “Area 51 scrambled its forces to defend the city, didn’t they? The base is vulnerable.”

“Uh-huh,” Endo says.

“Then we need to go to Vegas, too. It’s our job to—”

“The Tsuchi isn’t going to Vegas,” Endo says.

“What makes you think that?”

“I understand them.”

I try hard not to roll my eyes. Endo is obsessed with Kaiju, Nemesis in particular, but he fancies himself a regular monster whisperer. “And what do you understand?”

“That a creature begotten by Nemesis might have a thirst for more than flesh and blood.”

There are two things I really hate in this world:
The Golden Girls
and Endo being right. While the first Tsuchi showed a clear preference for densely populated areas and the people within them, the second charged northeast. I’m sure it’s had plenty to eat along the way, but a good portion of its path was empty desert. If all it wanted was food, it could have headed up the coast, while its now dead sibling went south. So it was being drawn by something else: vengeance. Like Maigo, it might retain the knowledge of what had been done to the Tsuchi who spawned it. The creature held a grudge, against GOD. “It’s going to Area 51. But why? It left the GOD building in Lompoc alone.”

“It’s after Brice,” Endo says.

“Brice is dead.”

“One of them is.”

“One of them?”

“Alicio Brice was one of the first U.S. scientists to work with Unit 731 after the war. He formed GOD and established Island 731 as an official black operation long before there was a DARPA organization to hide behind. The first Brice has been dead for thirty years. The man you met was one of many clones, all created by the first, all instilled with his knowledge and ruthless search for knowledge.”

I’m about to point out Endo’s similar personality flaws, but hold my tongue. If I’m stuck working with the man again, I need him on our side, at least until I’m in a position to bring him down. I also know now that Cole was lying about ending GOD’s biological weapons program. With a cache of Brices, the research could continue indefinitely. It’s then that I realize I haven’t even questioned the notion of clones. Has my life become so insane that human cloning is barely a blip on my weirdar?

“The remaining Brices, ranging in age from twenty to forty, operate out of Area 51. If the Tsuchi senses them the way Nemesis would a single offender, it will be drawn to them, its thirst for vengeance overpowering.”

“And what about Cole? Is he a clone, too?”

Endo shakes his head. “He’s a genius, like Brice, but not in the scientific way. He’s not a fan of Brice, or much of what he does, but he appreciates and utilizes the weapons being developed.”

“Ends justify the means,” I say. “I get it. So when does the shit show begin?”

Endo glances at the X-35’s digital displays. There are screens full of numbers and instruments I can’t make sense of, but the map, with a dot quickly moving atop it, is clearly our position in the world. “We’ll be there in ten minutes. Better get dressed. And wake the others.”

Nine minutes later, after dropping off the shell-shocked janitor outside the Little A'Le'Inn—a small restaurant and inn welcoming UFO fanatics to the outskirts of Area 51, where he was excitedly received as an abductee—I’ve exchanged my GOD uniform for Silhouette’s, which is just different enough to be recognizable. Thankfully, we’re close enough to the same size that it fits well. The ensemble is completed by the head piece and mask, which Endo claims the man rarely removed. Apparently, the BlackGuard leader preferred to keep people guessing, even his superiors.

Hawkins has also dressed in a uniform and concealed his face behind a mask. He’s bigger than me, and he’ll be playing the part of Obsidian. He’s not quite as big as the BlackGuard behemoth, but if no one scrutinizes him, it could work. Endo wanted to leave everyone but Lilly behind. Her injuries would grant us access to the infirmary, where he was sure we would find Alessi and Woodstock. But Hawkins wasn’t about to let Lilly out of his sight, and if Endo is right and a Tsuchi is going to attack the base, I’m not about to leave Collins and Maigo on the surface. Silhouette on the other hand, bound and seat-belted...he’s on his own.

“Two miles out,” Endo says. “We’ll be on the ground in forty seconds. When the hatch opens, follow me.” He looks at me. “If anyone questions us, keep your answers short and terse. Lower your voice an octave, if you can. Everyone, even Cole, should feel like you’re on the verge of getting violent. No one wants to be on your bad side.”

I glance at Silhouette. He’s staring right at me. We are most definitely on his bad side. That could be a problem someday.

Endo taps my arm with the back of his hand and points out the windshield. “Look.”

Looking out the front, it takes no effort to find what he’s pointing at. The Tsuchi, a good four hundred feet from mandible to tail tip, races across the barren terrain below, leaving a towering trail of dust behind it. “Why haven’t they spotted it yet?”

“They’re watching Vegas,” Endo says, “but they’ll know it’s coming when it passes the motion sensors a mile out from the base.”

We cruise over the Tsuchi and a line of mountains. Area 51 comes into view ahead and below. We swoop down toward it, the Tsuchi closing in, and our friends, according to Endo, are fifteen stories underground. This...is going to suck.