Project 731 (9 page)

Maigo nods, looking relieved and afraid.

Collins crouches next to me. “What happened? Jon, what’s—”

“It’s Nemesis,” I say, turning to Collins, feeling terrified, but unable to prevent a smile from forming. “She’s alive.”

11

“Alive?” Woodstock looks aghast. “Bullsheeit. We saw the ol’ girl die.”

“We never really confirmed it,” I say, head spinning. While I have to admit that part of me is relieved, I’m also filled with dread. If Nemesis is alive, more people are going to die, and it’s our job—my job—to stop her. The problem is that I don’t know if I can, and not because of our previous bond, though that weighs heavily; it’s because I’m pretty sure we’re not capable. A nuke might do it, but we’d be killing a lot of people along with her, and there’s no guarantee that even that would work. There’s still so much we don’t know about her. She’s not of this Earth, after all. “We didn’t even know how.”

Collins crouches beside me. “Jon...I know you had a connection with Nemesis.” She glances at Maigo. “You both did. But she was dead. Whatever you’re feeling now is—”

“It’s her,” I say, a trace of annoyance in my voice. I’m not used to being doubted. Granted, up until this very moment, I would have balked at the idea of Nemesis’s revival. But I know what I felt. “She was in pain.”

“Fightin’ with the Devil, most likely,” Woodstock says.

Maigo shoots him a look so serious that he raises his hands and backs away. “Let’s try not to forget we’re talking about a monster who killed thousands of people and very nearly ate me an’ Betty, on more than one occasion.”

“We thought you’d taste bad,” Maigo whispers, and given the lack of reaction, I think I’m the only one who heard. Nope. Not quite. Collins’s eyes have opened a touch, but she’s staring straight ahead, restraining her response. The three of us will talk about it later. Maybe.

“Is it possible you’re feeling something else?” Cooper asks, ever the pragmatist. “Something new? Something created from Nemesis’s remains, the way that Nemesis was created from the corpse of Nemesis Prime?”

It’s a good thought, but the connection was too familiar. I shake my head slowly.

Watson pulls at his hair a bit. Nemesis’s rebirth is triggering some anxiety I haven’t seen in the man since he became a father. He calms when Cooper puts her hand on his shoulder, but he still voices his concerns. “There are contingencies to activate. Protocols. But we don’t know where she is. Don’t know where she’s going. What should we do?”

“I think,” I say, standing to my feet and pulling Maigo up, “we should ask the only person who doesn’t seem surprised by the news.” I turn to Alessi. “How long have you known?”

“Eight months.”

“
Eight
months?” I so want to punch her, but she’d probably kick my ass, and that would get me nowhere but a hospital room...and chocolate pudding. Tempting.

“Penis envy doesn’t suit you, Jon,” she says.

I cough and sputter. Not only has she just said this in front of two teenage girls, it’s the kind of accusation that, when defended adamantly, makes the accused look guilty.

She doesn’t give me time to figure out a defense. “Just because we can do what you’re not able, doesn’t mean we’re working against you.”

“Who
are
you working for?” Collins asks, and I’m relieved the conversation is moving away from my manhood.

“I’m still employed by Zoomb, though I’m currently on leave. But Endo...that’s complicated,” she says.

“Like the ending of
Lost
complicated, or peace in the Middle East complicated?” I ask the question, but then realize the answer. “Whoever is paying the bills, he’s not really working for them, is he? You mentioned Endo’s allegiance earlier. It was never to Gordon or Zoomb. It was always to Nemesis.”

She doesn’t deny it, but refuses to reply.

“And you’re okay with that?” I ask. “I know he’s your half-brother, but is your allegiance to
him
so blind that you—”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” she says. “I came to warn you off because...you’re good people.”

This confession takes me a little off guard and puts her ribbing in a new light. Maybe she’s not trying to get under my skin? Maybe she’s just palling around? “Would Endo have stopped you from warning us?” I still don’t really know where he stands, and I have serious qualms about his moral compass.

Her frown tells the answer before she speaks. “I didn’t want to give him the chance to make that call. It would have...strained our relationship. And I haven’t heard from him in a week, which means he’s pre-occupied.”

“And you won’t tell us where he is?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “He’ll get in touch when its important.”

“Well, thanks for the warning,” I say, “but if Nemesis is alive, we can’t—”

“They’ll come for you.” She looks at the girls. “For them.”

“We’ll take precautions,” I say. “But this is what we’re here for. This is what we do.”

“They do it better,” Alessi says.

“DARPA?” Hawkins asks. He’s a bit red in the face, showing admirable restraint. Alessi has information he’s wanted since escaping Island 731.

“GOD,” she says, to eight confused listeners. “Genetic Offense Directive. They’re a black operation under the umbrella of DARPA, but without really any oversight. The island she’s from—” She nods at Lilly. “—was one of their projects.”

“They’re the ones in Lompoc,” Hawkins says.

Alessi sags in defeat. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”

I look at the resolute faces around me. The FC-P won’t back down from a Kaiju. They’re not about to back down from a shady government agency. But, these people are also my responsibility. Two of them aren’t even adults. Sure, they might argue that point, and they might also point out that physically, they’re more than ready, but they’re still my responsibility.

“We’re going to Lompoc,” I say, “but not all of us.”

“Cooper. Watson. Take mini-Cooper and go on a vacation. Pay in cash. Go dark. They might not be interested in you, but why take chances.” Watson is about to complain, but I silence him by clamping my fingers and thumb together. “There isn’t anything you can’t do on the road from a laptop. Just a few days, until this clears up.”

They both nod. Now comes the hard part. “Hawkins. Joliet. I need you both to take the girls and—”

“Not a chance,” Hawkins says. “I’m coming with you.”

“Not your call,” I say, matching the serious tone of his voice. “I know what this means for you, but if these GOD assholes are coming for Lilly and Maigo, I’ll feel better knowing you’re with them.”

“But,” Lilly says, and I clamp my hand at her.

“I’m not about to deliver you to them,” I say. “These guys are better than us.” I look at Hawkins, waiting for a challenge. He doesn’t offer any. He saw them in action. Knows we’re lucky to be alive. “They have access to weapons and technology that no one else does.” Back to Lilly. “This is not ‘capture the flag,’ and the BlackGuard are not us. No offense to any of you, but these guys are out of our league.”

“And if you get in trouble?” Maigo asks. “If you get killed? What then?”

“Won’t happen,” I say, but I know she’ll see straight through the bravado. “Just...stay safe. If we need your help, we’ll call.”

“Better keep us on speed dial,” Lilly quips with a half smile that reveals a sharp canine tooth. Her tail whips back and forth, revealing the agitation she’s keeping out of her expression.

“Collins, Woodstock.” The rest goes unsaid and they both nod. Not only is Collins my most trusted partner, but these two have been by my side since first contact with Nemesis. Collins is willing to walk into the belly of the beast, so to speak, and Woodstock is always there to pull us out. I turn to Alessi. “We’ll need a plane to get us there, and a chopper when we land. Can you swing that?”

Her grin says she can. I’m not sure what her position at Zoomb really is, but she’s got pull, and for now, with GOD and maybe even a goddess to deal with, I’ll take what help I can get.

12

“Dammit,” Alicio Brice muttered. While Building-K was sealed and the exits all covered by highly armed men, the BlackGuard would not be arriving to take care of this problem. They had been diverted by the one person at GOD whose authority superseded Brice’s, Zach Cole, the program’s director. He wasn’t a scientist. Lacked the mind for that kind of work. But he was ruthlessly efficient and a cunning man, not to be trifled with. And he was the man Brice would have to answer to if this problem wasn’t taken care of in a quiet manner.

While the GOD research facility was located on the Pacific Coast, outside Lompoc—the flower seed capital of the world—their main offices were located beyond the countless fields of flowers, in town, rising high above the city’s valley-sandwiched grid of two-story homes and businesses. If things got loud, Cole would know about it.

So the guards at the exits were armed with silent, non-lethal weapons—stun guns and sticky foam guns—as well as more conventional sound-suppressed weapons. They would try to take it alive, but at the first sign of trouble, they had been authorized to use lethal force on the Tsuchi, or on anyone implanted by it. Harsh measures, but the men understood. They’d seen Wood’s body, and they knew the creature had emerged from his skull. Mortal risk came with guarding the incubators. They lost men every year. Brice saw it as evolution in action. The men who had been with GOD the longest were the best. The fittest. And it was them he was sending into Building-K.

He stood outside the massive warehouse, smelling the ocean breeze. He rarely went outside; the salty, cool air felt unfamiliar and invigorating. Despite the potentially hazardous security breach, a smile spread across his face.
It’s going to be a good night
, he thought, looking up at the darkening sky. He decided to go out. Have some Mexican by the ocean. Maybe invite that woman from Level 3. What was her name? Dee Hardy? Dee Haddrill, that was it. He’d ask her.

“Sir?” a man said, standing a foot taller than Brice, looking down at him through the reflective night-vision goggles that would colorize and illuminate the dim confines of the giant warehouse.

Brice blinked out of his dinner plans and looked up at the man. He didn’t know the man’s name. Could barely see his face. But he was the senior guard on duty.
What do we call his rank?
“Yes? Uh, Captain?”

“Chief.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“I asked about containment protocols,” the large man said.

“Oh, right. Just immobilize the Tsuchi—”

“The Dark Matter.”

“Yes. These have been designated ‘Tsuchi.’”

“Sushi. Good to know.”

“Tsuchi,” Brice repeated, pronouncing it correctly with the Japanese TS sound emphasized.

The Chief offered a phony smile. “Heard you the first time.”

Brice took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The Chief of GOD’s guard was rubbing him the wrong way. “Immobilize it with the spray foam. I will come to collect it. If that isn’t possible, destroy the target, and I will come to collect it. Should any of your men be...stung...by the creature, they must be eliminated immediately. Any delay could be—”

“I get it.”

“I hope you do,” Brice grumbled.

The Chief’s faux grin faded. Without another word, the man turned around and headed for the five men waiting by the door, which would be opened just long enough for the six-man team to enter and split in two.

Brice checked his watch. 5:12 pm. If they wrapped this up in the next thirty minutes, his dinner plans might still work out. The Chief, now standing at the ready, beside the entry door, glanced back at Brice. He waved them in like he was shooing them away.

It took all
of Chief Reynolds’s restraint to not punch Brice in the nose. The man was insolent, cocky and disrespectful to anyone not as smart, which, admittedly, was most people. He also had direct authority over Reynolds and his men. He would still mention the man’s lack of respect to Director Cole, who was reasonable, fair
and
respectful to the security force. But that would come later. For now, Reynolds was on the job, and life-or-death circumstances waited for him and his men, on the other side of the metal door.

“Comm check,” he said.

One by one, the five men with him spoke their last names: Talbot, Ellis, Gilmour, McAfee and Cross. When they were done, he said, “Non-lethals are preferable, but I honestly don’t give a rip. If you feel you’re in danger, use lethal force at your discretion. Teams of three. Ellis, Gilmour, you’re with me. We’ll take the east end. Talbot, McAfee, Cross, head west. Sweep the perimeter, and converge on the far side. We’ll tackle the ‘Valley’ after that.”

All five men spoke their agreement.

Reynolds tapped the armor covering his chest, stomach and back. “We’re well protected, but should any of us be...stung, for lack of a better word, the resulting effect will be lethal inside a minute, and... Well, do yourself a favor and put a bullet in your head. If you can’t, I will.”

The crackle of a stun gun snapped to life in Reynolds’s hand. “Weapons hot.” The little data he had on the Tsuchi made it clear that a stun gun would have limited effectiveness, mostly because the thing had a shelled back. To really hit it, he’d have to tag it in the face or the belly. If it was as fast as Brice said, he doubted he’d get a chance to use it. That’s why they were leaning heavily on the foam guns, which could slather a target, expand and solidify in seconds, immobilizing anything it touched.

“On three,” Reynolds said, raising three fingers and counting down. When he lowered his last finger, Ellis flung the door open and went in, followed by Gilmour. The pair swept the space on the other side and then headed east. Reynolds closed and locked the door behind him, and then he fell in line behind Ellis and Gilmour, while the others headed west.

Building-K was a massive space. Its arched ceiling was covered with lights that really did little to illuminate the wide open space, partly because of the distance and partly because of the giant hangar’s contents. He’d heard the building described as a morgue, and it was, in every sense—chilled air, dead bodies, haunting atmosphere—but it was the deceased that made this morgue stand apart from all others. Here, the dead were Kaiju.

The first, of which he was currently walking along the perimeter, was called Nemesis Prime. The ancient monster had been recovered from the frozen wilds of Alaska. The tech company Zoomb, with whom DARPA had contracts, had dismantled the beast and shipped it to a warehouse. They had since lost custody of the creature’s corpse, though he doubted they knew where it went. In the wake of the disaster in Washington D.C., Director Cole determined that they couldn’t be trusted with the corpse, or its DNA. Moving quickly in the days after the battle that nearly destroyed the country’s heart, GOD had used every element at its disposal, including its private security force, to transport Prime, and her spawn, the now deceased Nemesis, to the Lompoc facility. The remaining five Kaiju, also deceased, were taken off-shore to an undisclosed island far above Reynolds’s pay grade. But everyone knew that the Kaiju that really mattered, the monster that killed five rivals, was here, lying beside her ancestor at the west end of Building-K.

Moving quickly and silently, the three men reached the far end of the warehouse and rounded the dried-out husk of Prime’s head. The ancient, gray skin stretched back to empty eye sockets the size of swimming pools. Despite its mummified, dehydrated state, the disassembled Kaiju had been laid out on its stomach, the way it would have been in life. Had the thing been living, it would have stood eye-to-eye with Nemesis, but with even more bulk. The ancient plates of armor and long spikes rose up toward the ceiling like an alien city.

As they circled around the far corner, a whispered voice tickled his ear. “West end clear.” It was Cross. “Coming your way. Over.”

“Copy that,” Reynolds said. “East end is clear, too. En route. Over and out.”

Despite the dark confines of Building-K, the goggles let him see everything clearly, including his men, five hundred feet away. What he couldn’t see was any sign of the Dark Matter, Brice’s precious ‘Tsuchi.’ And he didn’t really expect to. They were clearing the perimeter as a matter of course, but with all of the Kaiju nooks and crannies, a creature the size of a small dog would have no trouble hiding.

If it wanted to.

But Brice was confident the Tsuchi wouldn’t hide. Once they were out in the open, it would attack. And its brazenness would be its downfall.

The two groups merged halfway down the backside of the warehouse.

“All clear,” Cross reported, though he didn’t really need to. Had they seen something, Reynolds would know about it.

The Chief looked across Building-K’s interior. The space was divided by the two massive corpses, one on each side. Between the bodies was a large staging area and a laboratory. Flood lights, currently unlit, surrounded tables of equipment and sample trays. Most of the recent work was being done on Nemesis. While Prime was still a curiosity, Nemesis’s fresher body gave up her secrets more readily...at first. Now they had to drill through several feet of hardened, rubber-like skin that had slowly grown back, like a fungus, over the past year. While the body beneath lay still, the outer layer of skin, which some believed was a separate, non-sentient organism, grew a little each day.

Reynolds looked back and forth between Nemesis and Prime. They were equally huge, but only one of them still frightened him. It was why he hadn’t covered the west end. He’d never admit it, but being close to the goddess of vengeance unnerved him, primarily because he knew for a fact that he wasn’t a good man. None of them were. They were mercenaries with questionable pasts, given asylum and big paychecks, courtesy of GOD, its influence and its black budget. “Form a perimeter around the staging area. Facing in.”

“Facing in?” McAfee asked. “You want us to turn our backs on a Dark Matter target?”

“I want you to watch each others’ backs. And mine. We need to lure this thing out, and that means making it think we’re easy targets.”

“Copy that,” McAfee said with great reluctance.

Moving single file, the team flowed toward the staging area, but never made it. Gilmour stopped short. “What the hell...”

“Where?” Reynolds asked, switching to his KRISS rifle.

Gilmour pointed toward Nemesis’s body.

Reynolds saw it and lowered his weapon, eyes widening. “Dammit.”

He knew what the three exercise ball-sized holes in Nemesis’s side meant—it meant they were fucked.