Project Maigo (22 page)

And then, from the darkness, some unseen predator strikes hard, pulling me to my doom as water rushes into my lungs.

29

I have no memory of how painful my birth felt—to me, not to my mother. I imagine it wasn’t comfortable, being squashed down in too tight of a space, head compressed, limbs twisted. Torn from the world I knew and thrust into a coldness without connection. Could there be anything much worse than that?

The answer to that question, I now know, is: fuck yes.

I feel several things at once. My lungs and throat tear with wet coughs. Blinding jolts of pain explode from my ribs with each heave. The surface beneath my back is hard and uneven. Stairs, I think.

And then the rest of my full body pain returns. Screw childbirth, this must beat an afternoon in an iron maiden. But it’s not enough to knock me unconscious, which is both fortunate and unfortunate.

I hear breathing in the dark.

“Endo?”

“I am here.”

“The fuck did you do to me?”

“You drowned.”

The simple explanation is enough. I drowned. He performed CPR. Saved my life again. Damn him. Of course, I saved his, too. People are going to start thinking we’re pals. Feels like a few more of my ribs are broken. “Didn’t hold back, did you?”

I sit up with a grunt, clutching my ribs. The motion moves blood into my legs. The knife wound throbs. “You were pretty convincing. Up there on the roof.”

“There have been times when I would have liked nothing more than to kill you.” His honesty is disconcerting. If he changed his mind now, I’m not sure I could do much to stop him. “But,” he says. “you have been chosen for a purpose.”

He’s speaking about Nemesis. About my connection to her, which I understand a little bit better now. Not how it works, but why she would choose me.

I slide up against a cool, damp wall, pushing myself higher. “You have nice parents, Endo? A good childhood?”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then drops a bomb. “It’s your father.”

“The hell do you know about my father?”

“I know as much about you as you do about me,” he says.

“I know shit about you!” I shout.

“Then, yes,” he says. “I had a good childhood. And kind parents. They are
still
kind parents.”

“Asshole,” I say.

I hear him chuckle, and I have a strong urge to kick his face in, but I decide that will just end badly for me. “Where are we?”

“Underground,” he says, and I reconsider my boot-to-the-face idea. But then he adds, “Some kind of service tunnel. There’s a ladder here.”

I can’t see the ladder, but I can hear his voice. Turning toward him, I look up. A thin line of light shows the border of a square hatch. I struggle to my feet, leaning against the wall, and I pause to catch my breath. The air here still smells of ocean, but stings with the tinge of toxic chemicals. The burning in my throat and lungs might not be from more than drowning and being revived, though.

With a modicum of strength returned, I shuffle across the hallway like one of the undead, and catch myself on the wall, clinging to a ladder rung for support.

Endo stands next to me. “I know that we will never be...friends.”

I’m suddenly feeling awkward and uncomfortable, like when I was asked to the prom by Jenny Stillwater, my childhood-friend’s little sister. Not only was she four years younger than me, not only did I remember her in diapers, but she was my friend’s sister. It’s
just
not done. Of course, when I saw her again, three years later and all grown into herself, I wondered if turning her down was actually the best choice. But Endo isn’t about to grow anything feminine.

“I just want you to know…” he says, “you have earned my respect.”

“Just because Nemesis has—”

“Not because of how Nemesis—or Maigo—views you. Or even because of how you view her. But because you repeatedly put your life at risk to do what you believe is the right thing to do. Including returning for me.”

In the silence that follows, I realize that compliment time is over.

“Yeah, well, thank you, fuckface. Would you mind climbing the ladder now so we can find out who ordered that strike and kick their ass?”

“Gladly,” he says. He starts up the ladder, grunting with each rung ascended. As I follow, barely containing a scream with each step up, I realize that neither of us will be kicking asses anytime soon. There’s a clang of metal as he reaches the top and shoves. A flash of light reveals the brick tunnel around us. But then the hatch closes and Endo lets out a little growl. For a moment, I think we’re trapped down here, but Endo climbs another step, gets his shoulder under the door and shoves. Blessed sunlight pours into the tunnel. I expect Boston’s cool ocean air to follow, but I get a lungful of hot, foul smelling filth. I cough for a moment, while Endo exits.

When I reach the top, he bends to help me out. We’re not far from where we started, standing on a walkway in what used to be the Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park. It had been spared destruction a year ago, but it’s now a smoldering ruin. The grass is gone, replaced by ash, whisked away by the wind. Most of the trees were uprooted and either tipped over or flung away. Those that remain upright look like large incense burners, smoke twisting away from the tips of still burning branches. Anything that had been untouched by Nemesis has now been destroyed. Buildings. Wharfs. Boats.

We hobble together, toward the Harborwalk, along the shore. Through columns of rising smoke, I see the harbor. Steam rolls over the ocean’s surface. The remnants of a mushroom cloud billows upward. In the distance, jets circle in groups of three, wary.

Nemesis remains.

She’s still in the same spot, curled in on herself, a colossal armadillo. Smoke rises from her protective carapace, but I see no real damage.

She’s motionless, but not dead. While MOAB is an impressive weapon, wonderful for killing people and destroying buildings, Nemesis is designed, or has evolved, to withstand such an explosive force. Hell, she
contains
an even more powerful explosive force.

A grinding sound turns my eyes to the right. We’re standing in the shadow of a long, five-story, brick building. The Marriot, if I’m not mistaken. The red bricks, now scorched black, are crumbling.

Dread grips me. I’m not sure where it comes from, but its intense. And real. There’s a mountain of shit currently heading toward a very large fan, and we are still squarely downwind. The chop of a helicopter gives me a small amount of hope. I lift my aching arms and wave.

Betty comes in from the North, flying low and fast. A cloud of ash swirls into the air, whipped up by the rotors. Endo and I run for it while the Marriot caves in on itself behind us. We’re met halfway by Collins and Alessi, who silently help us into the chopper. Rather than bring me to the passenger’s seat—my usual station, Collins rather forcefully guides me to the back. Once I’m in, she slams the door and takes my seat in the front.

I lean forward, fighting the pain in my ribs, and pick up a headset. Once it’s on, I say, “We need to leave. Now.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Woodstock says, lifting Betty off the ground. “We’ll be headed north in just—”

“Not north!” I shout, the fear taking hold again. “Southeast. Through the North End. Go!”

I’m glad he doesn’t ask why. I have no answer. It’s just a feeling. We need a barrier between us and what comes next, and the ruins of downtown is the closest thing to a wall around here.

As we swing around and speed through the still standing skyscrapers of Boston’s North End, I look out the window and up. The line of jets is incoming again.

They fire.

Useless missiles trace lines across the sky above us.

The jets follow, not peeling away. They’re trying to buy time again. But for another MOAB? Or something worse? Seeing our flight-path through the North End is a perfectly straight line, I nearly ask Woodstock to fly us backwards again, but then I notice a tall building, beyond the North End, at the end of the street, still has most of its reflective windows. Looking at the reflection, I can see behind us into the harbor, all the way to Nemesis. The jets close in.

They’re too close…

And then it happens. Nemesis stands tall and spins around. Her chest heaves a few times, expanding. Her neck flexes like a dog about to puke.

I have no expletives to express how I feel at this moment.

So I just watch as Nemesis performs the super-sized equivalent of hocking a loogie. But the wad that comes out isn’t mucus. It’s a bright orange globule—her explosive fluid contained in some kind of clear viscous film. It arcs through the air, heading for the jets. For a moment I think it’s actually going to strike one of the jets, but the pilots are accustomed to thinking fast, and their planes are even faster. The problem is that the glowing projectile, if left unhindered, will sail clear over the North End and land smack dab in Boston’s heart, erasing all of what’s left of the city.

Of the thirty-plus pilots in the sky, one of them must realize this, too, because a missile launches from an F-22 before it turns away and kicks on its afterburners.

The missile strikes home as we clear the North End and emerge over the lower buildings in Boston’s downtown. “Stay low!”

The light from the resulting explosion turns my eyes away from the reflective windows. To the left, I see the green swath of grass that is the Boston Common, just beyond the Beacon Hill neighborhood. If we have to land rough, that’s the place to do it.

As the initial blast of light fades, I turn back toward the reflection of the North End, already a mile away. An orange glow chases us. Gaining. It slips through the North End like the buildings were made of air. The already stressed ruins just shatter. The metal glows yellow and melts away. What was left of the North End, is reduced to dust. It’s the last thing I see before the reflective windows providing my view shatter and fall to the ground, tiny twinkling lights.

The pressure wave strikes us hard, pitching us forward, while the concussive sound of the explosion pounds against our ears and cracks Betty’s windshield. Then we’re out of it, cruising low over the Commons and a string of swan boats.

While everyone catches their breath, I say, “Bring us up and around. I want to see.”

We quickly top out at two thousand feet, high enough to see the harbor from a safe distance. The North End is gone. It’s not just ruins now, it’s totally obliterated. Wiped off the map. A flattened swatch of scorched earth.

I need to have a chat with President Colossal Fuck-Up.

Just as soon as I go to the hospital, have surgery and begin physical therapy. My only consolations are that Boston was empty, so no one died, and that Endo looks as shitty as I do.

“Woodstock,” I say, leaning back and closing my eyes. “Hospital. Rapido.”

30

Chris Marshal’s vacation had finally turned a corner. He’d traveled to Thailand from New York City, where he worked as a day trader. His life was loud and chaotic and focused on things he wasn’t sure he cared about any more. Like money. Sure, he understood and appreciated what money could do for him, but the daily act of gathering and hoarding numbers like a squirrel preparing for winter had become a hollow act. At least the squirrel worked for its survival. He toiled for what? More. That’s it. More. So he fled to Thailand for a week of mind clearing, and maybe the comfort of a woman. Or two. But Bangkok didn’t feel very different from New York. Sure, it smelled, looked and sounded different, but the vibe was the same. All eyes turned inward, seeing only what the self desired.

So he fled again, this time taking the train south to Thailand’s mountainous Pak Song region, where a carpet of green rainforest covered everything. There were no tourists and the locals spoke only Thai, which he got around using the translation app on his smart phone. Despite the communication barrier, he was greeted with smiles everywhere he went. After a week of lounging around, trying new foods and making new friends, he felt a little more human. A little less dirty in his soul. But he also felt restless.