“Sounds fun,” Lilly said, and held out a black mask. “It’s time.”
Maigo took the mask while Lilly put on her own. Lilly’s entire body was black fur, head to toe, but she still wore body armor to protect against bullets, and a mask to conceal her feline identity. While the FC-P was now a very public agency, Lilly and Maigo were their best kept secrets.
“Have they found anything?” Maigo looked down at the floor where the action far below was projected. She could see black circles amidst the men still walking back and forth.
“They drilled a bunch of holes. Not too deep. Maybe fifteen feet. Haven’t found anything. But they’re just guessing.” Masked and cloaked in black armor, the only part of Lilly that looked like Lilly were her yellow, feline eyes. “What about us? Are we guessing, too?”
Maigo pulled on her mask and motioned to the cockpit with her head. “Take us closer.”
Lilly’s squinting eyes hinted at a smile before she bounded for the cockpit and slid behind the controls. Maigo barely felt the shift in motion, but the view below grew larger as they descended. “Stop us ten feet from the ground.”
They came to a stop just a few feet above the heads of two Russian soldiers. One of them sucked on a cigarette, its orange glow bright in the bleak night. Then he turned his face upward, looking right at Maigo, and blew smoke from his nostrils. He laughed and spoke to his partner. Then they wandered off, patrolling the island.
“Move toward the center of the island,” Maigo said.
They slid through the air without making a sound, passing more soldiers, scientists and holes leading nowhere.
Then the tug returned. Maigo ground her teeth and resisted its influence. “Here. Stop.”
She worried the pull on her would continue. That she would end up in another trance, but it left as fast as it came this time.
Lilly leaped into the cargo bay. “Right spot?”
Maigo looked down and saw a bore hole. They’d managed to hit the right area, but hadn’t gone deep enough. “Do you have the remote?”
Lilly pulled the device from her pocket. It was small, with simple controls, but it let her operate the X-35’s most basic functions, including the rear hatch. It would allow them to get back inside when they were done, hopefully with whatever was buried beneath the island.
“Let’s go,” Maigo said.
Lilly turned off the interior lights. The hatch lowered without a sound. Even with the hatch wide open, they would be hard to see. Just an absence, or bending, of stars. Lilly’s squinted eyes revealed a smile again. “Insert witty Hollywood catchphrase here,” she said, and then jumped.
Maigo leapt into the dark behind her, hoping they wouldn’t start an international incident.
Lilly landed beside the pit, with catlike grace, scanning the area for danger and then using the remote to send the X-35 a thousand feet up, after Maigo leapt.
Maigo dropped right inside the pit, falling twenty-five feet before landing with the same ease other people feel when hopping off a single step. The drop didn’t frighten her, but what she saw at the bottom did.
Lilly leaned over the top, her body a silhouette surrounded by a circle of Arctic stars. “Uhh, something wonky is going on. Everyone is clearing out.”
“It’s because these aren’t test pits,” Maigo said, looking at the digital display counting down from ten. “They’re drilling holes. For explosives. Run!”
Maigo leapt for the opening. Lilly didn’t need to help her out, but caught her arm anyway. “How much time?”
Maigo just shoved her and ran, counting down the seconds in her head. But they didn’t just need to get away from the one drilling hole—they needed to clear a field of them. She headed for the domed, prefab base, which was no doubt set up in a spot free of explosives.
“Three,” she whispered.
Lilly glanced at her. “What?”
“Two...”
Lilly’s eyes went wide.
“One...”
Maigo grabbed hold of Lilly’s back, picked her up off the ground and heaved. Lilly soared through the air, arcing over the domed base. Maigo took two more steps before she felt a burst of heat, a slap of energy and then the rush of wind against her face. Like Lilly, she’d been flung through the air. Unlike Lilly, she’d also been scorched, compressed and knocked unconscious by the explosion that covered the island’s core, reducing stone, grass and countless bird nests into dust.
10
Night has arrived, cloaking untold destruction in darkness, and bringing nothing but questions. All we really know is that something big crashed—scratch that—was propelled into the Gulf of Maine, creating a tidal wave that wreaked havoc with coastal cities between Cape Cod, which was all but washed away, and Portland, Maine. Homes and businesses have been destroyed. Entire cities are flooded. The official death toll won’t be known for weeks, maybe months, but it’s probably going to eclipse three hundred thousand. For all of Nemesis’s rampaging, she was never responsible for wholesale destruction like this.
I’m not even sure what to be angry at. An asteroid? Thor swan diving from Byfrost, the Rainbow Bridge? Something else? Something worse? The impact site is underwater. The military is searching where they think the object landed, but so far, it’s just empty ocean and lots of dead fish.
A second object is believed to have touched down in the Pacific, but the waves that reached the West Coast, Japan and other island nations, were far less severe. Maybe water depth played a role. Or its distance from land. Or maybe it just slowed down. We might not know what it is, but I have a short list of suspects, and none of them are benign. But without an actual enemy to shoot at or run away from, my hands are tied. The New England seacoast has been declared an emergency zone, and crews from across the nation are already filing in to help, but my gut tells me they’ll be forced to turn around before arriving.
I grip the balcony railing outside the Crow’s Nest kitchen and look up at the stars. I’ve spent a lot of nights out here, sometimes alone, more often with company. Being in the heart of a city with 40,000 people, I don’t get to see a whole lot of stars. But tonight...surrounded by a city without power and wiped clean of homes, the night sky is alive.
“C’mon, you bastards,” I grumble. “Show yourselves.”
A lone satellite sparkles as it glides past, far overhead. It could be beaming a TV signal down to Earth, receiving GPS data or helping in the search for answers. At least it’s doing something other than waiting. Cooper and Watson are overseeing the rescue efforts, but we’re leaving the details to the people who do it for a living. Without some kind of weirdness to focus on, we’re just bystanders.
I hear the kitchen door open and close. I know it’s Collins before she’s standing beside me. Anyone else would have said something before joining me.
“Anything new?” I ask.
Her hands slide up on my shoulders and squeeze. “Nothing actionable.”
“Big Diomede?”
“Satellite coverage in five minutes.” She runs her knuckles down my back on either side of my spine, smoothing out the tension.
“Has Watson found a way to track the girls yet?” I ask.
Collins’s hands stop on my back. “You heard me say, ‘nothing actionable,’ right?”
I turn to face her. She’s dressed in black field-ops garb, minus the body armor. Ready to go. “What about our visitors?”
Collins points past me to the lawn off to the left of the property. I can barely make them out, sitting in the grass, talking lightly. One of them laughs. At least they’re a resilient bunch. Weird, but resilient.
Collins leans on the rail beside me. “Cooper wants them here until the roads are clear and power restored. They didn’t seem disappointed.”
And why would they be? Not only are they fans of the fictionalized exploits of the FC-P and Nemesis, but the Crow’s Nest, unlike most of the seacoast, has power. We have a battery backup good for forty-eight hours and then a propane generator with a full
tank. If power takes weeks to restore, we’ll still be shining bright.
Her hand slides down to mine, our fingers interlinking. “You worried about her?”
“Worried I won’t have a chance to kick her ass. Both of their asses.” I shake my head, trying to come up with a reason Lilly and Maigo would desert us. Even if they were going out for a joy ride, they would have come back the moment that white light cut through the sky. Them not being here means something bad has happened.
“Kids do this kind of thing,” she says.
“You had an invisible super-sonic flying machine when you were a teenager? I didn’t. And they’re not kids. Not really.”
“They’re young and impulsive, regardless of whether or not they can jump off buildings or pick up cars.” She lets go of my hand, takes hold of my cheek and turns my face toward her. “Have you considered the possibility that they had a good reason to leave?”
They’ve been part of this team for a while. They perform well on all field missions. Even Lilly. She used to be a cocky little shit, but now she’s a team player. Maybe they’re being teenagers, but there’s also a chance they’re doing what they think is best for all of us...something that only the two of them could do.
I stare at her for a moment. “Asses are getting kicked, one way or the other.”
She smiles and kisses me. “Without a doubt.”
The window above us bongs twice. Watson is in the window waving us up, a frantic look in his eyes. We run through the house, up the flight of stairs and stumble into the Crow’s Nest operations center before Watson can step away from the window. The open concept space that takes up the entire third floor of the house is less spacious than it used to be. There are more workstations spread out around the hardwood floor, to accommodate our burgeoning staff. The brick walls are all but covered with maps, screens and white boards bearing the faded scrawl of investigations come and gone. A lot has changed in the past three years, when the office was mostly empty and boring, but it feels more like home than ever.
“Over here,” Watson says, heading for his workstation. Since becoming a married man, and a father, Watson has improved his image. He’s lost weight, cut his hair and improved his wardrobe. Honestly, I think Cooper dresses him. But all of that polish has been worn away. His hair is a mess. His shirt hangs open. And he looks hopped up on caffeine.
Cooper, despite being married to Captain Disheveled, and the mother of a toddler, has managed to keep her schoolmarm appearance intact: power suit unruffled, black hair pulled back tight, black-rimmed glasses in place, perfectly accentuating her olive skin, a gift from her black father and white mother. She’s also on the phone, talking in rapid, hushed tones, so I head for Watson.
He sits at his new workstation, the curved screens creating a semicircle around him. He says it’s the future, and the nerds at Zoomb agree, but seeing a screen in my periphery fills me with nausea. Charts, statistics and scrolling bits of code fill the expansive screen, but it’s the series of photographs in the center display that catches my attention. Despite the view being in reverse black and white thermal imaging, I recognize the view from above, because I saw it in person earlier today: Big Diomede.
The island is crawling with soldiers. A small domed base has been set up. A prefab of some kind. A series of small black holes pock the surface of the island, though they only look small from far overhead. Up close they must be a few feet wide. Helicopters circle the island. How did they know? How the hell did they find us? “When was this taken?”
“Five minutes ago.”
“Can we get closer?”
The image shifts to a full screen view, wrapping around us. We zoom in, seeing the Russian soldiers in sharp detail, the heat of their exposed faces blazing stark white. Watson scans across the island, pausing over each soldier and hole.
“What are the holes for?” Collins asks.
“No clue,” Watson says. “But they’re all in this part of the island. Nothing near the new structure.”
“Hold on,” I put one hand on Watson’s shoulder and point past his head, to a gray speck inside one of the holes. “What is that?”
“I was getting to that,” Watson says, zooming in on the small rectangle of heat. “Pretty sure it’s explosives. The heat is from a timer.”
“What makes you think—”
The image switches view. A white hot fireball covers a large portion of the island’s core.
“Over here,” Collins says, pointing to the far left area of the curved screen. “Look.”
A lone person with a feminine figure, clothed in black from head to toe, most of her heat signature cloaked, stands in the face of the explosion, arms raised protectively. While the woman stands against the force of the explosion, debris and flames blow past her. There’s only one woman on Earth who could stand up to that kind of force, and I’ve come to call her my daughter. “They went back to the island.”
“I don’t see Lilly,” Collins says.
“Don’t see Lilly where?” Joliet stands behind us. She’s a petite, blonde, French Canadian, generally as intimidating as a baby duckling, but when she’s angry, she’s a lot more frightening than Lilly at her worst. We part, so she can see the image. She takes a deep breath, displaying admirable self-control.
“You’re going to have to get in line for the ass kicking,” Collins says.
“If they’re alive,” Joliet says, all her anger melting into concern.
“Do we have the next image?” I ask.
Watson minimizes the image and opens a folder. “Just came in.” After a quick double-click, the image expands and we see what has become of the island.
“Hell,” I say.
The center of the island is partially concealed by smoke and debris, though much of the stone surface has been flung away. But I can still see enough to know the island is more important than we first thought. Where there had been flat stone and patches of grass, there were now three, perfectly smooth rings, one inside of the other, all connected by a central line.
“Whatever is under there, we don’t want the Russians to get it,” Watson says.
“We need to get over there,” Joliet says. She hasn’t been on a field mission since being shot a year ago, but the look in her eyes says not even a Kaiju could stop her. Unfortunately, international borders can.
And honestly, the Atlantean whateveritis isn’t my biggest concern at the moment. “Can you find her again?”
Watson zooms in and scrolls to the left, nearly reaching the domed structure. Maigo is sprawled on her back. All of her limbs are intact, but that doesn’t mean she’s okay. And the line of rifle-wielding soldiers filing toward her is a very bad thing.
“Look for signs of Lilly and Betty,” I say to Watson. “And send every incoming satellite image to my—”
“We have incoming!” The volume and suddenness of Cooper’s normally restrained voice makes everyone jump.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Could be Nemesis.” Cooper turns on one of many view screens now positioned around the Crow’s Nest. We can get video from just about any TV station, CCTV camera and military feed in the world—at least from cooperating nations, which includes all of NATO and a few that want into NATO. The feed displayed on the screen is infrared, looking down from a helicopter.
Surrounded by cold blue ocean is a body displayed in bright white, yellows and oranges. It’s something close to an amorphous blob. The outline is distorted by water, but it’s huge and moving. Fast.
“ETA?” I ask.
“Just over an hour.”
I point at the video feed. “Where is this?”
“Above Wildcat Knoll,” she says. “Forty five miles out.”
“Do I want to know which direction it’s heading?” I ask.
“Do you have to ask?” Cooper raises an eyebrow. And the answer to her question is, No, I don’t freaking have to ask. Because we’re a magnet for this crap. “How do you want to proceed?”
I look
at the colorful infrared image again. “It’s not Nemesis.”
All heads turn toward me.
“The shape is wrong,” I explain. “And it’s swimming with its legs, not its tail. I don’t even see a tail.”
“Does its identity have any bearing on our response?” Cooper asks. And that’s the million dollar question.
If this is Nemesis, with Endo as her ‘voice,’ then he/she/it/they might not be coming here to lay waste to the Massachusetts coastline. Not that there’s much left to lay waste to. But that can’t matter. Where Nemesis goes, destruction follows.
“No,” I reply. “Hit it with everything we have in the area, from a safe distance. Nemesis or not, I want it reduced to a lifetime supply of chum before it reaches land.”
As we start to disperse to our various stations, Joliet takes my arm in her hand. “What about the girls?”
That last image of Maigo laying on her back, about to be captured by Russian soldiers flashes through my mind. They’re half a world away, beyond our legal reach, and without Future Betty, our physical reach. “They’re on their own.”
“They don’t need to be,” Hawkins says, arms crossed, his anger barely contained. But is he upset that the girls have screwed the pooch, or that I’ve declared them a second priority? Probably both. I’m not a fan of the situation, either. “Send me after them.”
“How are we supposed to send—”
“Don’t send Dustin Dreyling,” he says, using the name we gave him. It’s a cover. None of us use the name, but it’s on his ID badge, and his true identity, Mark Hawkins, is now a ghost. Technically, he doesn’t exist, just like Lilly. Unlike me, he has remained out of the public eye. No one would recognize him if he was caught. But there is still the question of transportation.
“You have the President’s ear,” he says, one step ahead of me. “We know there are options.” He’s referring to a ride I took on a supersonic stealth transport a few years back. It could whisk him from here to the other side of the planet nearly as fast as Future Betty. The VTOL plane could pick him up anywhere there was room, like at Hurd stadium, just down the street. But they wouldn’t be able to drop him off. And he once again shows he’s thought this through.
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