Project Hyperion

by Jeremy Robinson

  “ETA?” I ask as soon as she picks up.

  “Ten minutes. Are you okay?”

  “Been a bumpy flight, and there aren’t any peanuts. Any trouble getting our assets in place?”

  “None, and no questions asked. They even gave us a fighter jet escort.” Her delivery of this small bit of good news is followed up by a more glum, “It’s on the news, you know.”

  I didn’t know, but how could it not be? “Let me guess: Lots of speculation, no real facts, and a lot of scared people.”

  “A news chopper caught the last explosion from a very long distance. The image was pixelated, but clear enough to see something big still moving around after the blast. And everyone still alive on the coastline heard it.”

  “Evacuations underway?”

  “Slow, but yeah. It’s hard to evacuate people who need to be in hospitals. We’re doing what we can, though.”

  In this case, her ‘we’re’ is Zoomb, not the FC-P, and I’m glad my inherited multibillion-dollar global corporation is doing something more than adding zeros to the bottom line.

  “I’ll let you know when we’re on the ground.” I move my thumb to disconnect the call, but pause. “Thanks for being on top of this. If Endo were around, he’d—”

  “Probably be pissing you off,” she says.

  “Good point. Never mind then.”

  “Thanks, though,” she says, and then hangs up.

  The next thirty minutes are a slow motion, yet white-knuckled descent toward the ocean, where a real life sea monster lurks. It’s a big ocean, but I have a bad history of attracting trouble’s ugly attention. After several lurching falls and kick starts, the coastline emerges from the darkness. Normally, it would be easier to see, but most of the coastal cities have no power after the tsunami, and the sun isn’t up yet. The only lights I can see now in the pre-dawn gloom are the blue and red flashing of emergency vehicles.

  “We’re going to make it,” I say, and I see Woodstock wince. “What?”

  “Hate to break it to you, but seeing land and making it there are two different things. We’re just a thousand feet up and still dropping.”

  Looks like we’ll be swimming after all, if we survive the crash at sea. “Cooper is tracking our GPS. I can have her send—”

  “I said we weren’t going to make it to the mainland,” he says, “I didn’t say I was going to put the old girl down in the water.” He points out the windshield to the left. I have to lean forward, but then I see it. The bright beam of a lighthouse twitches past.

  “I don’t see the island,” I say.

  “Best I can do,” he says. “An’ if we get wet, the swim’ll be a short one.”

  I give him a nod, and he says, “Buckle up!”

  Collins and I glance at each other. We’ve been buckled and grasping various ‘oh shit’ handles for the last thirty minutes. Then we twist to the side and dive down. For a moment, I think we’re actually crashing, but we level out with a grind of gears that shakes the seat beneath me. The lighthouse is straight ahead, beaming its light into the cockpit every few seconds. The moonlit island comes into view, and my eyes widen. It’s less of an island and more of a collection of jagged rocks emerging from the ocean. The base of the lighthouse is actually submerged in the ocean, partially surrounded by the stony islet.

  “Geezum crow,” Woodstock says, pulling hard on the control stick. “Going to be a rough one.”

  The engine coughs.

  The rancid scent of fuel smoke fills the cabin.

  Woodstock puts the chopper into a slow spin, descending toward a ragged chunk of stone that looks just large enough to catch the chopper’s skids. We slow a bit, but then something clangs. The rotor snaps to a stop, and the chopper spins on its axis.

  The list of things I hate seems to grow every year, but one of the very first things on the mental tally is the Tilt-A-Whirl. I puked a centrifugal-fueled ring all over my classmates in seventh grade. It even got in Jenny Stillwater’s mouth. The incident scarred me for life, the bright side being that no one saw from where the spew originated. But I knew. And if I had a repeated episode now, Collins and Woodstock would definitely know.

  So I tighten my core, swallow hard and then scream when I see the ground rushing up. The skids hit hard, catching on the stone and slamming my head into the side door. I recover from the blow fast enough to realize we’re tilted at a pretty severe angle, but no longer in the sky. I glance out the side window and see a rotor blade wedged into the ocean below, holding us in place.

  Then, with a groan, the blade rotates and the chopper topples off the rock. My seatbelt tugs hard against my body, and nearly Heimlich maneuvers the puke out of me, but I survive our second fall with little harm done. As water rushes into the cab, the plastic case between my feet jostles loose and falls. I reach for it, but it’s Collins who catches it, just above the water. She’s already unbuckled and righted herself. She’s bleeding from a gash on her forehead, but she seems alright otherwise.

  “We sinkin’?” Woodstock asks. He digs into his pocket, plucks out a toothpick and inserts it in his upside down mouth.

  “Just a few feet of water,” Collins says. “Probably dry land when the tide is out.”

  “Well, that’s sumthin’ I s’pose. Now, help an old man down.”

  After a few minutes of falling and cursing and crawling and splashing, we clamber onto the rocky shore.

  Woodstock pauses to give Betty a salute. “You done good, girl.”

  Then we hoist ourselves onto a metal platform built several feet above the high tide line and head for the granite lighthouse’s door.

  “Graves Light,” I say, reading the sign beside the door. I grin at Woodstock. “Well, you managed to crash us on the most foreboding island in Boston Harbor, so that’s great.”

  “Better than the ocean,” he says.

  “Touché.”

  Collins tries the door and upon finding it locked, kicks it in. The door moves in just a little bit, and then bursts outward, nearly knocking us off the platform. Water pours out from the inside, washing past our already wet legs. After the water clears, I step inside. Glass crunches beneath my feet. The windows, top to bottom, are blown out, evidence of the tsunami’s passing. Five flights of spiral stairs later, I’m winded and looking out the watchroom window. Boston is barely visible in the glow of an early rising summer sun still over the horizon. Inside an hour, we’ll be able to see without a problem, but do we have an hour?

  I climb the last flight from the watchroom to the lantern room. The harsh light forces my eyes closed until it passes, then I find the door and step out onto the catwalk, leaving the musty lighthouse interior and entering the humid, sea-scented outdoors once more. I put my hands on the railing, and look down. An array of solar panels are mounted to the tower, just below my feet. That’s how it still has power. I turn from the view of a darkened, partially rebuilt Boston and look north up the lightless coast. This has to end sometime, I think. Then I spot motion off to my right as something is caught in the lighthouse’s beam. My mind replays the image frozen into the back of my eyelids, and I see it for what it was.

  A wave.

  A big ass wave.

  Taking some small comfort in the fact that the granite lighthouse is still standing after the last wave that struck the coast, I dive back inside, crashing into Collins and Woodstock, and tumbling the three of us down the spiral staircase, just as the structure rumbles from an impact.

  17

  “What the heck is wrong with you?” Lilly asked as Maigo backed away from the massive, stoic head with glowing red eyes. The masked face, armored and ancient, was clearly not alive, but the thing radiated power. “I mean, yeah, it’s freaky and intimidating, but it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.”

  Maigo didn’t stop backing away until her back was against the tall spire rising up through the island’s core. Maigo could be all kinds of weird, Lilly knew, but after what she’d lived through, she was rarely afraid. Aside
from the fear of becoming a monster, which she didn’t mention much around Lilly on account of her catlike appearance, Lilly found it hard to believe any kind of external force could affect Maigo so profoundly. She looked mesmerized. She looked...lost.

  “Maigo.” Lilly stood between the girl and the giant head. The masked, metal face looked like all robotic visages, in that it lacked any emotion other than the stern gaze with which it had been constructed. But she hoped blocking Maigo’s view would snap the girl out of the trance. “Hey!”

  Unblinking eyes stared right through Lilly. “It killed me.”

  Lilly leaned in close. “Hate to break it to you, but you’re still alive.” She gave Maigo’s face a pat. “Snap out of it.”

  “It killed me.”

  Lilly nearly lost her patience, but then realized there might be some context for the statement that she hadn’t fully realized. Maigo had been murdered, after all. It might not have been this Maigo, but she still had some of the first Maigo’s memories, transferred by DNA, much of it not human. But her murderer had been a man. Her father. Not a giant robot.

  “It didn’t kill you, Maigo. You’re alive. You’re with me.” Lilly leaned in closer, her piercing yellow eyes impossible to ignore. But Maigo pulled it off, staring straight ahead.

  Lilly lifted her black gloved hand, and with a quick flex, pushed her long black claws out through the fingertips of her thumb and index finger. “Have it your way.”

  Using her claws, Lilly pinched the skin on Maigo’s arm. No reaction. “I know you’re tough, but come on.” She looked down at the skin pinched between her claws and winced. “You asked for it.” She pushed hard, harder than she thought she’d have to, and punched two small holes in Maigo’s arms.

  The reaction was powerful and unexpected. Maigo kicked out hard, sending Lilly sprawling away. Then she clawed at the air and fell to her butt, trying to push away from something unseen. She’s lost in a memory, Lilly realized. But not her own.

  Maigo’s body seized for a moment and then went slack.

  Lilly dove to her side and caught the girl before she slumped over. “Hey.” She checked Maigo for a pulse and after finding one, tapped the girl’s cheek. “Hey. Wake up.”

  Maigo’s eyes fluttered and then opened. For a moment, Lilly thought her friend was still out of her head, but then Maigo looked up at her. “It killed me.” Her eyes welled with tears.

  “Who killed you?”

  Maigo leaned over and looked past Lilly at the robot. Its face hadn’t changed. The glow of its serious red eyes remained constant.

  “Uh huh,” Lilly said. “Whoever it killed, it wasn’t you.”

  Maigo crushed her eyes shut and rubbed her head. “It wasn’t me.” She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “It was Nemesis. The first one.”

  “Prime.”

  Maigo nodded. “It was a long time ago, but I think I just relived it. Some of it anyway. I remember that face. And pain. And anger. I haven’t felt like that since...ugh. We don’t need to talk about it.”

  Lilly pulled Maigo to her feet, glad to have her friend back. “So, what now? We came here to find and take what was hidden here, but...”

  “The plan hasn’t changed,” Maigo said.

  “You want to take that?” Lilly thrust her hands out at the robot head, and then waved them up and down to indicate its entire, massive body. She moved to the edge of the platform and looked down at the armored body. The broad chest bore the three-ringed Atlantean symbol that had brought them to this island. The silver body, almost like brushed metal, gleamed like new. It looked built for power, its limbs thick, and yet somehow it appeared ready for action, as though it could spring to life at any moment. In some places it bore the marks of ancient battle, including claw marks. In many ways, it reminded her of some kind of ancient warrior, like a Spartan, or Samurai, but it lacked any real resemblance to any single human culture.

  Because whoever made this wasn’t human, Lilly thought. “How the hell are we supposed to get that out of here and past the Russians, never mind to the other side of the planet?”

  “I’m going to talk to it,” Maigo said.

  “You’re going to what now?” Lilly looked at the large face, searching for hints that it was anything more than a giant robot. Badass? Yes. Dangerous? Absolutely. Alien? Without a freaking doubt. But alive? “You’re not saying this thing is—”

  “Artificially intelligent,” Maigo said, putting some of Lilly’s concerns to rest. “But it can’t function without a Voice.”

  “So it what...needs a speaker system?”

  “Voice with a capital V,” Maigo said, stepping closer to the head. “A pilot.”

  “And what makes you think you can—”

  “I have experience,” Maigo said.

  Lilly squinted at her friend. “You mean Nemesis.”

  Maigo gave a faint nod and raised her hand back to the metal orb at the center of the platform. She twitched as though shocked, but then turned to Lilly. “Last time, it was communicating. Now, it’s waiting. It’s listening.”

  “For what?”

  “For orders.”

  Lilly smiled. She couldn’t help herself. This was mind blowingly awesome.

  Maigo returned the smile, reaffirming their conspiratorial relationship. “Open sesame.”

  A loud clunk made both girls leap back. Maigo withdrew her hand from the orb, but the noise continued. After several clunks and a whirring of gears, the massive face split open at the center, and segment by segment, it slid apart.

  “It’s like that lady’s face in Total Recall,” Lilly said. “You know, when it splits open and Arnold is underneath looking all like, ‘shit, my covah is blown.’”

  “Haven’t seen it,” Maigo whispered, and she stepped to the edge of the platform. The open head was ten feet away, the gap between them hundreds of feet deep.

  Lilly followed her to the edge and cringed when she saw what was inside the head. At first she saw a rough approximation of what she expected. Metal parts. Cables. Lights. But at the core of it all, was what looked like an oval shaped bed mounted at an angle and covered with a shiny black sheet. Then it began to warble. “It looks like a funky-ass water bed from some kind of 70s porno.”

  “You know far too many pop culture references for someone who has only lived in this country for two years,” Maigo said.

  Lilly bristled at the comment. “You try spending all your days in hiding.”

  “I do,” Maigo said. “We just hide for different reasons...and only one of us watches 70s porn.”

  Lilly chuckled and shrugged. “People were hairier back then.”

  Then the water bed sprang to life, as the black separated into tendrils and reached out.

  “Nemesis did the same thing,” Maigo said. “When Endo...” She closed her eyes, sounding a bit more afraid than she had a moment ago.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Lilly said. “We don’t know anything about it. We don’t even know if you’ll be able to get out.”

  “This thing is selective about who it lets inside.”

  Lilly rolled her eyes, took off her glove and put her hand on the orb. It was probably a stupid thing to do, especially if there was a result, but nothing happened. She felt absolutely nothing.

  “It has less to do with your physical or mental abilities and more to do with biology. Neither of us is fully human, but you’re at least made from creatures that evolved on this planet. Part of me is human. But the rest of me...it’s not even terrestrial.”

  “So it’s biologically locked?” Lilly asked.

  “In part,” Maigo said. “But it also got a good look at what I was, what I did and who I became. It knows that I was part of Nemesis, but it also knows I was revolted by it. I think that qualified me. Look, the real point is this, there is a chance that anyone...or anything else that passes the same test could be very bad for the human race. It needs to be guided by the right person, or we could all be screwed.” She turned to Lilly. �
��No one else can do this.”

  Lilly took a step back and flashed a feline grin. “Then do it.”

  Maigo didn’t hesitate. She jumped out over the gap and easily cleared the ten feet to the open head. She climbed up toward the black tendrils, which seemed to relax as she got closer. Standing before the oval, the thin limbs opened to receive her. She turned back toward Lilly, gave a wave and fell back into the black surface. The tendrils caught her, wrapped around her body and then enveloped her, pulling her down.

  Seeing Maigo slide away filled Lilly with a sudden panic. Her muscles tightened as she prepared to jump the distance and tear her friend out. But the head slammed shut, one section at a time, until it looked like it had, just minutes ago.

  Lilly stood, dumbfounded.

  Nothing changed.

  Then a booming voice filled the chamber. “Can you hear me?” The voice was deep and masculine, digitally enhanced to sound foreboding, but it was still Maigo.

  Cringing from the volume of the voice, Lilly cupped her hands over her ears and shouted, “Too loud!”

  The deep, commanding voice whispered, “Oh my god, I’m sorry,” and drew a cackling laugh from Lilly.

  “You did it,” Lilly said. “Are you in control?”

  “I don’t know,” the mighty whisper said. “I’ll try, but I think you should get out of here first.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Lilly said. “Just don’t waste time coming up. There’s still a bunch of salty Russians topside.” Then she sprang up onto the staircase and instead of taking the long, tedious way up and around, she leapt from level to level, climbing hundreds of feet in under a minute. She reached the top of the spire, expecting to be greeted by bullets, but instead she found a complete lack of welcoming committee.

  Either the Russian military is slacking, or they’re just waiting us out.