Project 731, page 9
part #3 of Kaiju Thriller Series
“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.
13
Reynolds was about to give the order to switch to lethal weapons when Talbot shouted “Contact!” and unleashed a torrent of foam that struck the floor, mushroomed out and solidified. But the man had missed the mark, and instead of locking the Tsuchi in place, he provided it with a springboard to launch its attack.
The creature sprang from Nemesis’s tail, where it had been hiding, perfectly camouflaged on the rough, black flesh. Talbot unleashed another stream of foam, this time striking the Tsuchi’s underside, but as the viscous goo expanded, the Tsuchi landed atop Talbot’s face, wrapping its eight legs around his head and squeezing.
Talbot’s muffled screams were punctuated by a loud crack from his jaw. The foam slid into his mouth. Down his throat. And it was expanding. His body twitched and fell back with the Tsuchi frozen in place, unable to escape the foam, but striking him over and over with its stinger-tipped tail. Fortunately, the armor did its job, preventing the stinger from reaching his flesh.
Reynolds dropped his stun gun and drew his KRISS rifle, putting a single round in Talbot’s head, and putting the man out of his misery. Then Reynolds sent a stream of bullets into the Tsuchi’s tail, severing it. The long, whip-like tail fell to the ground, writhing and spinning on for several seconds, before it fell still, like the Tsuchi itself. The creature was locked in place, unable to move its limbs, trapped in the foam. It was still alive—for the moment—which would please Brice, but it was the least of their problems.
“Stay sharp,” Reynolds said. “There are three—”
“Argh!”
The high-pitched shout spun Reynolds around. It was Gilmour, suspended in the air upon what looked like a spear tip emerging from his chest. It had punched a hole through both layers of armor, but that wasn’t the most shocking thing about the scene. The tip of the spear looked like a giant-sized hypodermic needle. The hole at the end was clogged with Gilmour’s guts, but they shot out with a slurp and were followed by a spurt of white fluid. The gore landed at Reynolds’s feet, red flesh mixed with white fluid, all surrounding a writhing, white larva. Then the spear-needle withdrew and stabbed Gilmour twice more while he was held aloft by two, long, spidery arms, tipped with scimitar-sized talons. Each thrust shot a new larva into the air, none remaining inside the body, which Reynolds knew was a good thing. Gilmour’s body was then cast aside, revealing the horror behind him.
At the most basic level, the creature resembled a Tsuchi—eight limbs, a spider’s face and mandibles, and a long, twitching tail. But the comparisons ended there, because this thing was much, much worse. The first, most obvious discrepancy was the size. The armored shell on its back, stretching from head to tail in a series of overlapping armored plates, was the size of a Volkswagen Bug. The creature’s eight eyes glowed bright orange, as did several basketball-sized spots on its underside. Given the evidence of the Tsuchi’s birth, Reynolds understood what the glowing membranes meant. The eight legs, still thin and spindly, were now covered in thick armor, like Nemesis, but with a bluish, almost iridescent hue. In fact, all of the armor had an almost oily quality, as though energy were flowing through it. It was the tail that held Reynolds’s attention the most, now arched up behind the monster’s back, poised to strike.
But the monster didn’t move. It regarded the four remaining men, one after the other.
“Ellis, Cross,” Reynolds said, “hose this thing down when I give the word. McAfee, switch to lethal. Aim for the head. Do not hit the orange membranes, or we’re all toast.” He didn’t wait to hear confirmation from the men. They hadn’t run away, which meant they were listening. “Fire!”
Twin streams of foam shot out, striking a few of the Tsuchi’s scythe-like limbs, but not all of them. Spinning sideways, the monster shot one forelimb at Ellis and snapped its tail at Cross. The latter’s shout of surprise was cut short by a loud crack—the giant needle punching through his armor, body, a second layer of armor and finally, the foam’s containment unit. When the tail withdrew, foam sprayed out from the back of the tank, and from the hole in Cross’s chest. As it hardened and expanded, Cross was lifted off the ground like he’d been nailed to some kind of ancient sacrificial altar.
Ellis fared no better. The sharp talon at the end of the limb hadn’t pierced him, but it slid up and under the man’s armor, yanking him off his feet and into the creature’s talons, even as the tail stabbed through Cross. When both talons dug into Ellis’s shoulders, his body convulsed. Blue sparks leapt out and streaks of electricity sparked between the two points. When he hung limp, the Tsuchi began to chew, dragging Ellis’s body further inside its widening maw with each bite.
It wasn’t until Cross was frozen in hard foam, and Ellis was fully consumed, that McAfee and Reynolds recovered from their shock and opened fire.
The Tsuchi bucked and twisted under the barrage of high caliber rounds, clearly confused about what was happening. But Reynolds could tell they weren’t doing any real damage.
“I’m in my office on the fifth floor, and I hear gunfire,” a voice said in Reynolds’s ear. It was Brice. “Have you killed it?”
While Cross continued to fire, Reynolds reloaded his rifle without looking. “The target Tsuchi is dead.”
“Then why do I hear gunfire?” The scientist sounded irritated, unaware that his research facility was about to go to hell.
“Because the thing reproduced!” Reynolds shouted, backing away and firing as Cross reloaded. The Tsuchi was still twitching from each round, some of them actually punching through its thick, black skin, but most of it ricocheting off its armor plating.
“I told you to shoot your men if—”
“Most of my men are dead,” Reynolds said, his magazine empty again. “The Tsuchi reproduced with Nemesis’s corpse!”
The line fell silent.
“This thing is the size of a truck!” Reynolds opened fire again, stopping when his back struck the far wall. He wasn’t far from the exit.
“But there is just one?” Brice asked. “The Tsuchi reproduce in sets of three.”
Reynolds glanced toward the holes in Nemesis’s dead skin. Three of them. “I’ve seen only one, but there is evidence of three.”
“My god...” Brice said. “I’m coming down.”
“I feel better alread—”
A long, armored tail snaked down from above. Reynolds looked up and saw a second Tsuchi clinging to the wall. He shouted a warning, but it was too late. The spear tip stabbed into McAfee’s back, three times in rapid succession, each time spurting a white blob and writhing larva onto the floor. But the Tsuchi must have seen this and understood the man wasn’t a host for its young, because it lifted McAfee up and shoved him head fist into its open maw, every mandible chomp crackling with electricity. A torrent of blood fell between Reynolds and the exit.
As he considered running through it, a roar, like a high-pitched squeal mixed with a gurgle, echoed through the massive hangar. Reynolds gasped as a third over-sized Tsuchi flew through the air, spinning out of control. It landed inside the jumbled remains of Nemesis Prime.
What the fu—
A shift of movement, so large he nearly missed it, slid across the western side of the building.
It was an arm.
The size of three buses, end to end.
Dropping his useless weapon, Reynolds ran through the curtain of McAfee’s blood. There was nothing he could do to stop what was coming. Nothing any of them could do.
Nemesis was alive.
Even worse, she was awake.
14
I snap awake at the sound of a text message chime. In a daze, I dig my phone out of my pocket, then fail to punch in the unlock code three times, before finally getting it right, looking at the screen and realizing the text wasn’t mine. With a yawn, I look around the interior of the big rental SUV. I’m alone in the back, sprawled out over the seat. Collins and Alessi are in the front. We left Woodstock at the Santa Maria Airport, where a shiny, dark blue, Bell 525 Relentless, one of the world’s most expensive corporate helicopters—sporting a Zoomb logo—awaited him. It didn’t have a mounted gun, like helicopter Betty, but it would get us around in style...if necessary. The helicopter would be used for a quick getaway, but we were hoping to get in and out without being noticed, using fake GOD IDs, also courtesy of Zoomb.
I’m not sure Alessi’s allocation of Zoomb resources could possibly go unnoticed, especially while she is ‘on leave,’ so I’m sure there are unsaid strings attached, or an alternate agenda, but right now I don’t care. The FC-P—my family—is under threat because of these guys, and I’m going to do what I can to turn that around. For the moment, I’ll play the role of Faust.
I blink my eyes open wider and sit up. We pass a sign for Vandenberg Air Force Base. I could have very easily requisitioned a flight directly to Lompoc, landing minutes away from our destination, but there is no doubt our arrival would have been noticed. Alessi’s thumbs tap out a message on her phone. Collins sits behind the wheel.
“Welcome back,” Collins says.
I slept on the flight across the country, my third in far too few hours, and I never really woke up as we transferred to the vehicle. “What are the odds that these phony keycards will get us into GOD’s cafe? They must have great coffee, right?”
“Look to your right,” Collins says.
I turn my head and find a cup of coffee, steam slipping through the hole in its plastic cap, sitting in a cup holder. “We stopped?”
“You slept through it.” Collins glances back at me. “Pushing yourself too hard.”
“Don’t really have a choice,” I say, raising the coffee cup as though making a toast and taking a sip. The warm liquid seems to spread out through my body, waking my mind, and reminding me how much I already ache. Ignoring the pain, I lean forward and peek over the seat.
“That Endo?” I ask Alessi.
She hits ‘send’ on her message and angles the screen so I can’t see it.
“No? Maybe your BFF?” I get no response. “But that can’t be right. I don’t have a text.”
The slightest hint of a smile shows I’m getting through. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
Her phone chimes again, and like a trained monkey, I put my hand on my pants pocket, about to remove my phone. Ignoring the fact that I’m already halfway to being mind controlled by electronics, I lean forward, trying to read what’s on Alessi’s screen. But she hides it from me again. What she fails to hide is the surprise on her face.
“What is it?” I ask.
“We need to go in,” she says.
Collins shakes her head. “We’re not ready.”
“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.
13
Reynolds was about to give the order to switch to lethal weapons when Talbot shouted “Contact!” and unleashed a torrent of foam that struck the floor, mushroomed out and solidified. But the man had missed the mark, and instead of locking the Tsuchi in place, he provided it with a springboard to launch its attack.
The creature sprang from Nemesis’s tail, where it had been hiding, perfectly camouflaged on the rough, black flesh. Talbot unleashed another stream of foam, this time striking the Tsuchi’s underside, but as the viscous goo expanded, the Tsuchi landed atop Talbot’s face, wrapping its eight legs around his head and squeezing.
Talbot’s muffled screams were punctuated by a loud crack from his jaw. The foam slid into his mouth. Down his throat. And it was expanding. His body twitched and fell back with the Tsuchi frozen in place, unable to escape the foam, but striking him over and over with its stinger-tipped tail. Fortunately, the armor did its job, preventing the stinger from reaching his flesh.
Reynolds dropped his stun gun and drew his KRISS rifle, putting a single round in Talbot’s head, and putting the man out of his misery. Then Reynolds sent a stream of bullets into the Tsuchi’s tail, severing it. The long, whip-like tail fell to the ground, writhing and spinning on for several seconds, before it fell still, like the Tsuchi itself. The creature was locked in place, unable to move its limbs, trapped in the foam. It was still alive—for the moment—which would please Brice, but it was the least of their problems.
“Stay sharp,” Reynolds said. “There are three—”
“Argh!”
The high-pitched shout spun Reynolds around. It was Gilmour, suspended in the air upon what looked like a spear tip emerging from his chest. It had punched a hole through both layers of armor, but that wasn’t the most shocking thing about the scene. The tip of the spear looked like a giant-sized hypodermic needle. The hole at the end was clogged with Gilmour’s guts, but they shot out with a slurp and were followed by a spurt of white fluid. The gore landed at Reynolds’s feet, red flesh mixed with white fluid, all surrounding a writhing, white larva. Then the spear-needle withdrew and stabbed Gilmour twice more while he was held aloft by two, long, spidery arms, tipped with scimitar-sized talons. Each thrust shot a new larva into the air, none remaining inside the body, which Reynolds knew was a good thing. Gilmour’s body was then cast aside, revealing the horror behind him.
At the most basic level, the creature resembled a Tsuchi—eight limbs, a spider’s face and mandibles, and a long, twitching tail. But the comparisons ended there, because this thing was much, much worse. The first, most obvious discrepancy was the size. The armored shell on its back, stretching from head to tail in a series of overlapping armored plates, was the size of a Volkswagen Bug. The creature’s eight eyes glowed bright orange, as did several basketball-sized spots on its underside. Given the evidence of the Tsuchi’s birth, Reynolds understood what the glowing membranes meant. The eight legs, still thin and spindly, were now covered in thick armor, like Nemesis, but with a bluish, almost iridescent hue. In fact, all of the armor had an almost oily quality, as though energy were flowing through it. It was the tail that held Reynolds’s attention the most, now arched up behind the monster’s back, poised to strike.
But the monster didn’t move. It regarded the four remaining men, one after the other.
“Ellis, Cross,” Reynolds said, “hose this thing down when I give the word. McAfee, switch to lethal. Aim for the head. Do not hit the orange membranes, or we’re all toast.” He didn’t wait to hear confirmation from the men. They hadn’t run away, which meant they were listening. “Fire!”
Twin streams of foam shot out, striking a few of the Tsuchi’s scythe-like limbs, but not all of them. Spinning sideways, the monster shot one forelimb at Ellis and snapped its tail at Cross. The latter’s shout of surprise was cut short by a loud crack—the giant needle punching through his armor, body, a second layer of armor and finally, the foam’s containment unit. When the tail withdrew, foam sprayed out from the back of the tank, and from the hole in Cross’s chest. As it hardened and expanded, Cross was lifted off the ground like he’d been nailed to some kind of ancient sacrificial altar.
Ellis fared no better. The sharp talon at the end of the limb hadn’t pierced him, but it slid up and under the man’s armor, yanking him off his feet and into the creature’s talons, even as the tail stabbed through Cross. When both talons dug into Ellis’s shoulders, his body convulsed. Blue sparks leapt out and streaks of electricity sparked between the two points. When he hung limp, the Tsuchi began to chew, dragging Ellis’s body further inside its widening maw with each bite.
It wasn’t until Cross was frozen in hard foam, and Ellis was fully consumed, that McAfee and Reynolds recovered from their shock and opened fire.
The Tsuchi bucked and twisted under the barrage of high caliber rounds, clearly confused about what was happening. But Reynolds could tell they weren’t doing any real damage.
“I’m in my office on the fifth floor, and I hear gunfire,” a voice said in Reynolds’s ear. It was Brice. “Have you killed it?”
While Cross continued to fire, Reynolds reloaded his rifle without looking. “The target Tsuchi is dead.”
“Then why do I hear gunfire?” The scientist sounded irritated, unaware that his research facility was about to go to hell.
“Because the thing reproduced!” Reynolds shouted, backing away and firing as Cross reloaded. The Tsuchi was still twitching from each round, some of them actually punching through its thick, black skin, but most of it ricocheting off its armor plating.
“I told you to shoot your men if—”
“Most of my men are dead,” Reynolds said, his magazine empty again. “The Tsuchi reproduced with Nemesis’s corpse!”
The line fell silent.
“This thing is the size of a truck!” Reynolds opened fire again, stopping when his back struck the far wall. He wasn’t far from the exit.
“But there is just one?” Brice asked. “The Tsuchi reproduce in sets of three.”
Reynolds glanced toward the holes in Nemesis’s dead skin. Three of them. “I’ve seen only one, but there is evidence of three.”
“My god...” Brice said. “I’m coming down.”
“I feel better alread—”
A long, armored tail snaked down from above. Reynolds looked up and saw a second Tsuchi clinging to the wall. He shouted a warning, but it was too late. The spear tip stabbed into McAfee’s back, three times in rapid succession, each time spurting a white blob and writhing larva onto the floor. But the Tsuchi must have seen this and understood the man wasn’t a host for its young, because it lifted McAfee up and shoved him head fist into its open maw, every mandible chomp crackling with electricity. A torrent of blood fell between Reynolds and the exit.
As he considered running through it, a roar, like a high-pitched squeal mixed with a gurgle, echoed through the massive hangar. Reynolds gasped as a third over-sized Tsuchi flew through the air, spinning out of control. It landed inside the jumbled remains of Nemesis Prime.
What the fu—
A shift of movement, so large he nearly missed it, slid across the western side of the building.
It was an arm.
The size of three buses, end to end.
Dropping his useless weapon, Reynolds ran through the curtain of McAfee’s blood. There was nothing he could do to stop what was coming. Nothing any of them could do.
Nemesis was alive.
Even worse, she was awake.
14
I snap awake at the sound of a text message chime. In a daze, I dig my phone out of my pocket, then fail to punch in the unlock code three times, before finally getting it right, looking at the screen and realizing the text wasn’t mine. With a yawn, I look around the interior of the big rental SUV. I’m alone in the back, sprawled out over the seat. Collins and Alessi are in the front. We left Woodstock at the Santa Maria Airport, where a shiny, dark blue, Bell 525 Relentless, one of the world’s most expensive corporate helicopters—sporting a Zoomb logo—awaited him. It didn’t have a mounted gun, like helicopter Betty, but it would get us around in style...if necessary. The helicopter would be used for a quick getaway, but we were hoping to get in and out without being noticed, using fake GOD IDs, also courtesy of Zoomb.
I’m not sure Alessi’s allocation of Zoomb resources could possibly go unnoticed, especially while she is ‘on leave,’ so I’m sure there are unsaid strings attached, or an alternate agenda, but right now I don’t care. The FC-P—my family—is under threat because of these guys, and I’m going to do what I can to turn that around. For the moment, I’ll play the role of Faust.
I blink my eyes open wider and sit up. We pass a sign for Vandenberg Air Force Base. I could have very easily requisitioned a flight directly to Lompoc, landing minutes away from our destination, but there is no doubt our arrival would have been noticed. Alessi’s thumbs tap out a message on her phone. Collins sits behind the wheel.
“Welcome back,” Collins says.
I slept on the flight across the country, my third in far too few hours, and I never really woke up as we transferred to the vehicle. “What are the odds that these phony keycards will get us into GOD’s cafe? They must have great coffee, right?”
“Look to your right,” Collins says.
I turn my head and find a cup of coffee, steam slipping through the hole in its plastic cap, sitting in a cup holder. “We stopped?”
“You slept through it.” Collins glances back at me. “Pushing yourself too hard.”
“Don’t really have a choice,” I say, raising the coffee cup as though making a toast and taking a sip. The warm liquid seems to spread out through my body, waking my mind, and reminding me how much I already ache. Ignoring the pain, I lean forward and peek over the seat.
“That Endo?” I ask Alessi.
She hits ‘send’ on her message and angles the screen so I can’t see it.
“No? Maybe your BFF?” I get no response. “But that can’t be right. I don’t have a text.”
The slightest hint of a smile shows I’m getting through. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
Her phone chimes again, and like a trained monkey, I put my hand on my pants pocket, about to remove my phone. Ignoring the fact that I’m already halfway to being mind controlled by electronics, I lean forward, trying to read what’s on Alessi’s screen. But she hides it from me again. What she fails to hide is the surprise on her face.
“What is it?” I ask.
“We need to go in,” she says.
Collins shakes her head. “We’re not ready.”
