Project Maigo (34 page)

“Tried,” Woodstock says. “Your arms and legs might be working fine, but you need to take it easy. A concussion is nothing to screw around with.”

Collins went to work on the bolt with one arm while cradling the launcher in the other. “You’re just saying that so you can tell Jon you said it.”

Woodstock slid himself back against the tire of an abandoned car, wincing with the movement as his legs straightened. “Pretty much.”

“This thing will still launch?” Collins asked.

“I can trigger it remotely,” Alessi said. “But someone still needs to point it in the right direction.”

Collins felt the bolt about to fall away. “How much does it weigh?”

Alessi shrugged. “Hundred pounds.”

Collins tightened her hold on the launcher just as the bolt fell away. She dropped the wrench and got both hands beneath the cylinder. Felt like more than a hundred pounds, but she’d lifted—and carried—more than that in the past. Not with a concussion, but there was no time for whining.

“You sure you got that?” Woodstock asked.

Collins grunted, hefting the cylinder up and propping it against her shoulder. “My grandfather used to say ‘It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.’”

“Spoken like a true woman of Maine,” Woodstock said with a smile. “You’re meltin’ my heart.”

“Your grandfather was quoting Mark Twain,” Alessi said, leaning against the chopper’s belly.

“Yeah, well, my grandfather was well read.” Collins looked up at the building behind which they’d taken shelter and crashed. It looked mostly intact. “You’re sure this will work?”

Alessi took a phone from her pocket and spoke the number twice. “Call me when you’re in position. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Collins had her personal phone in her pocket. She gave a nod and headed for the building’s open front doors, hoping the blast hadn’t destroyed local cell towers. Broken glass crunched beneath her feet as she moved into the building’s lobby. The reception desk looked more like a bunker. A metal detector led to the far side of the entryway where she could see a sign for the stairs. She didn’t know what the building was used for, but she assumed it contained overflow offices for House and Senate personnel.

The interior of the building was lit by emergency lights, glowing against a few of the walls. She could see, but just barely. She moved by sliding her feet forward, afraid of tripping over some unseen obstacle. But the path was clear, and she soon reached a row of elevator doors followed by the doorway to the stairs.

A wave of dizziness swept through her body. Stars danced in her vision. She carefully set the metal cylinder down and took several deep breaths, focusing on remaining upright. If she went over, she didn’t think she’d get back up for a while.

I’m never going to make it up the stairs
, she thought, recalling the building’s fifteen-story height.

She glanced at the elevator. Would they still be running? It was possible that emergency power in the government building would operate the elevators, at least for a short time, so VIPs didn’t get stuck. Dragging the cylinder across the marble floor, she pushed the call button. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

Collins didn’t think about religion much, but she had no doubt some higher power had just intervened on her behalf. “Thank you, baby Jesus.” She stepped inside and hit the button for the highest floor. The doors slid shut. The elevator shuddered and rose. It felt like slow going for an elevator, and the overhead light flickered a few times, but it rose up steadily.

The doors jittered open, as though struggling to complete a final task. The hallway beyond was lit by dim emergency lights. Feeling a little more rested after leaning against the elevator wall, Collins put the cylinder against her shoulder again and moved into the hall. She quickly found the stair entry to her left and hobbled to the door. Inside the stairwell, she looked up. Two flights to go.

She took several, rapid, deep breaths, saturating her lungs with oxygen. The effort cleared the cobwebs some, but did nothing for the pain. She took the stairs quickly, taking deep breaths the whole way. By the time she reached the second landing, she was sweating and out of breath, but the effort got her blood flowing and fought against her desire to simply pass out.

A green metal door blocked her path to the roof. She tried the handle and found it locked, as expected. With a sigh, she placed the launcher down on the concrete landing and drew her .50 caliber handgun, happy that she’d reloaded the weapon after escaping the secret Zoomb laboratory.

This is going to hurt
, she thought, wishing she could cover her ears. With just a moment’s hesitation, she pulled the trigger once. The cacophonous report made her shout, and clutch her free hand to her ear, but the powerful round did its job, destroying the door’s lock.

She took the now-loose handle, shook it about and pulled. The door ground open, unleashing a warm smoky haze. Collins coughed and felt her nausea return, but she pushed past it, picking up the launcher and heading into the battle-lit night.

She staggered onto the roof, heading toward the sound of battle. When she reached the charred edge, she looked out into hell. A massive swath of the city had been reduced to charcoal. Fires burned around the perimeter. Judging by the amount of smoke rising from below, she believed her building was burning, too.

Crouching near the building’s edge, she placed the launcher on the stone-covered roof and dialed Alessi on her phone. “You’re already there?” Alessi asked, sounding surprised.

“Elevator worked,” Collins said. “Please tell me you’re ready.”

“Just point the launcher toward Scylla. I’ll use the guidance system to target her and fire the rocket, but...it’s going to get hot for you.”

“I understand how rockets work,” Collins said. “Let’s just get this done.”

She put the phone on speaker mode and dropped it in her pocket. Then she hoisted the launcher onto her shoulder and stepped closer to the edge. Nemesis stood a mile away, facing Collins. Karkinos and stoic Typhon stood in front of Collins, their backs to her, oblivious to her tiny presense. They appeared to be sizing each other up, slowly moving in broad destructive circles like wrestlers in a ring.

She found Scylla still lying in the reflecting pool, but starting to stir. They didn’t have long. She pointed the launcher toward Scylla and shouted, “Good to go!”

“Hold on,” came Alessi’s muffled voice. “Once this thing launches, you can move, okay?”

“Just fire it!” Collins shouted. Her head was spinning, her arms shaking.

“Target locked,” Alessi said. “Firing in three, two, one—”

The rocket inside the canister ignited, blowing the back off. She could feel the heat singe her shoulder, but she held the launcher in place. Then the rocket was free, kicking back a wave of heat. Collins shouted in pain, dropped the launcher and fell to the roof, where she remained, unmoving, as the rocket-propelled neural implant cut a path over the ruins of downtown Washington, D.C.

46

Mark Hawkins shouted with surprise as his feet left the ground. He was lifted up by an arm far stronger than the average human’s. But this surprise was a happy one, because the fist wrapped around the back of his armor belonged to Lilly, not Gordon.

Seeing his prey escaping, Gordon lunged, but he was too late. Lilly’s express elevator carried Hawkins thirty feet up, and then across, slipping through entwined branches, moving from tree to tree, faster than Gordon could run on the ground.

When Lilly finally stopped moving, she deposited him on a high branch and asked, “Okay?”

“Fine,” he replied. “Thanks.”

She gave a feline smile and disappeared in a blur of black fur.

After collecting himself, Hawkins nocked an arrow and searched for Gordon, feeling like Robin Hood as he looked over his bow’s fiber-optic sight, standing on a branch thirty feet above the ground. He was concealed by the leaf-laden branches, but the foliage also hindered his view. He mumbled curses while he moved further out on the branch, which bent from his weight.

The view ahead cleared and he locked his legs around the branch to stay upright and took aim again. With the drawstring pulled taut, he whistled a bird call.

He could hear Gordon chasing Lilly below, and the giant monsters in the distance, but amid all that, the sound of a bird call reply came loud and clear. Lilly was on her way. She passed by below. A blur in the night. Superhuman.

Gordon moved quickly too, but despite his dark coloration, he stood out. It took just a half second for Hawkins to adjust his aim and let go of the bowstring. The arrow whistled through the air, heading downward, puncturing leaves and then finding its target. The projectile slipped through the thick flesh of Gordon’s right shoulder, burying itself six inches deep.

With a roar of frustration, Gordon stopped. He looked at the arrow, snarled and snapped it off with a flick of his hand, leaving six inches inside his body. Then he looked up, straight through the leaves, following the arrow’s trajectory in reverse, straight to Hawkins.

“You’re going to need more than a children’s toy,” Gordon said.

The giant man took one step toward the tree while Hawkins nocked another arrow, but then he stopped and turned toward the east. Hawkins, never one to waste an easy shot, let the arrow fly. It struck Gordon behind his neck, but the man didn’t even flinch. Instead, he crouched down on the ground and rolled his body into a ball.

What the...?

Hawkins looked east in time to see a bright orange glob gliding through the air. The giant known as Karkinos roared and swung one of its massive, dual clawed hands at the thing. Then, there was light as bright as the universe’s creation.

Hawkins shouted in surprise, shielding his eyes, but he lost his grip on the tree in the process. He began to fall, but he clenched his legs tighter and stopped himself at an angle. He remained there, stuck at a sixty degree angle for all of a half second. Then the sound hit. And the pressure wave. And the heat.

Hawkins was torn from the branch and flung. His mind whirled as the explosion set his ears ringing. He spun through the air, growing dizzy as he fell toward his doom. But as his arc through the air turned downward, he felt cradled, held tightly.

Opening his eyes, he saw Lilly staring down at him. Her yellow eyes were alive and determined. “I have you.”

When they reached the ground, Lilly absorbed the impact with her legs as though they’d fallen just a few feet. She then put Hawkins on his feet.

He worried about her safety so much, but here she was, saving him. Lilly, in just a few short years, had grown up. She was a mother. A skilled hunter. A warrior. And now his rescuer, returning the favor he’d granted her by taking her off that island.

Before he had a chance to thank Lilly, he looked over her shoulder. The far side of the South Lawn was on fire, but that only mildly concerned him. A mushroom cloud billowed into the air in the distance. For a moment, he worried about radiation, but then he remembered the glowing orange glob he’d seen. He, like everyone else in the world, knew what happened when those orange membranes on Nemesis’s body ruptured. And Nemesis’s new trick had been to launch smaller globs of the stuff from her mouth.

If she wasn’t careful, Nemesis was going to kill the very people trying to help her. Or was it the other way around? Hudson’s plan had been vague on that area. In the end, Hawkins took it as an ‘enemy of my enemy’ situation. But how could a creature like Nemesis understand who was on her side and who wasn’t? He doubted the giant would even notice their presence, let alone act to keep them alive.

“Is this how people will see me?” Lilly asked, looking at the fresh destruction. “Am I a monster? A Kaiju?”

That question, from Lilly, was loaded. The word Kaiju to her was more personal. Her mother’s name. But she understood it now, knowing that monsters, in general, were ‘Kaiju’ to the world. And her mother
was
a monster.

“Not even close,” Hawkins said with a grin.

“I don’t want to hide anymore,” she said.

“It might not be that simple.”

“Only monsters have to hide,” Lilly said.

Hawkins understood the point, but wasn’t convinced. Then he thought about the number of cameras likely recording the White House and the surrounding area. Her battle against Gordon would be...

Gordon!

A black shadow tore through the night.

“Look out!” Hawkins shouted.

Before he could react to his own warning, Hawkins was lifted and thrown straight up. He reached out with his arms and caught a low branch. Looking back, he saw Lilly duck just in time to avoid Gordon’s swing. He followed up the roundhouse with a crushing blow. Lilly leapt to the side while Gordon’s fist punched a crater into the ground.

Rather than running, Lilly sprang back at Gordon, catching him by surprise. She raked her claws against his chest twice, narrowly missing the orange membranes she’d been warned about, leaned away from his hugging arms and kicking him in the gut. When Gordon pitched forward, she kneed him in the chin, snapping his head back.