With little recourse, Maigo triggered the voltage amplifier. Three prongs sprang out of each of Hyperion’s forearms, each to the side of where the blades had come out earlier. The blades were now back inside the arms. And as she saw this, Maigo knew that the Level Three weapons system would emerge just to the side of the voltage amplifier’s pointed, metal electrodes. The rods punched into the thick flesh of Nemesis’s shoulders without puncturing any membranes. As soon as two rods made contact, a massive burst of electricity flowed into Nemesis’s body.
The Kaiju roared in pain, but then leveled her gaze at Hyperion and leaned into it, shoving her claws a little deeper.
With the AI warning of imminent and permanent damage, Maigo turned the juice up to full. Nemesis flinched from the electricity, twitching and roaring in pain, but she didn’t withdraw.
We’re going to kill each other!
Level Three weapons systems are now charged, the AI informed her. Feeling desperate, Maigo triggered just one of the Level Three weapons. Hyperion’s back opened and a massive cannon pulled out and rose up over the robot’s head. It didn’t change Maigo’s view, but she knew that wherever she looked, the cannon would be able to fire. The laser cannon dwarfed the power of the Swarm, and with a sustained blast at close range, it could remove Nemesis’s head. The weapon locked into place and hummed with a full charge, just feet away from Nemesis’s face.
Maigo just had to will it to happen, and Nemesis would cease to exist.
Damnit! Maigo thought, and the weapon snapped back off the head and retreated back inside the robot’s back.
Action recommended, the AI said, but Maigo’s command was not what was expected, or even predicted by the system that could calculate variables and probabilities better than C3P0. That was the point of the Voice, so the system complied.
Maigo’s view shifted from the one projected into her mind by Hyperion to her own eyes, sliding up out of the black goo holding her in place. Hyperion’s head opened around her, exposing her to mortal danger, and Nemesis’s eyes.
For a moment, the Kaiju showed no reaction, and when it roared, Maigo took the blast head on. Then she stood up, raised a hand and shouted, “Nemesis!”
27
What the hell is she doing, I think, when the massive robot’s head splits open. Then she’s standing, raising her hand toward the Kaiju and shouting something. My zoomed in view through the VR headset is shaky, but I don’t need to be a world class lip reader to know what she’s saying, and to figure out what she’s doing. She’s reaching out. Trying to communicate with a monster. I tried the same tactic standing on the rooftop of a Boston skyscraper. Like a 350-foot-tall dog, Nemesis actually responds to her name, though back when I tried it, I had to call her by her human name: Maigo.
While my communication with Nemesis worked out and ended her wrath-filled destruction of Boston, I had sacrificed a man’s life to do it. Right now, the only thing Maigo has to offer is her own life.
I’m five hundred feet up, doing slow circles around the scene, taking Collins and Woodstock along for the ride as their drones follow Hydra Seven’s lead. They’re probably getting tired—well, Woodstock at least—but I can’t abandon my daughter. Not now.
There isn’t much I can do if anything goes wrong. I have no illusions about the effectiveness of the three lasers now under my command. But I’d never be able to forgive myself if things went badly while I was hightailing it back to the coast.
Nemesis faces down the small Maigo, leaning in close, her lips curled up, her teeth bared. She could snap Maigo up before I realized it had happened.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, the destroyer of Boston leans closer, lowering her snout toward Maigo’s outstretched hand.
The shock I feel at the moment of contact is replaced by a tingling in my toes that quickly slides up my body. When it reaches the base of my skull and my vision starts to fade, I realize what’s about to happen and attempt to put the drones on autopilot.
A charred and steaming Boston harbor fades. Nemesis, Maigo and Hyperion, slip from my vision. The smell of salt water becomes pine and cinnamon. My downward view flips over. I’m staring up at pine needles and branches laden with gaudy Christmas ornaments and a rainbow of lights.
“Why are we here?” I ask in the voice of my child self, knowing that Maigo is in the room. At the moment of connection with Nemesis, she reached out and connected with me. I really wish I had some kind of control over this, or at least could accept or decline the mental call, but here we are once again, celebrating our childhood Christmases in my living room.
“I didn’t do it,” she replies. “Not on purpose, at least.”
A third voice joins us, making sound effects. “Meeroooow. Pew, pew, pew. Kaboosh!”
I sit up fast, dragging my face through the pine branches, scratching my skin and sending a few ornaments tumbling to the hardwood floor. I don’t worry about the scratches, or the ornament that shatters. None of this is real. It will all be back to normal the next time we end up here. But the addition of a third person is new, foreign and disturbing. As surreal as this place is, it’s always been a private place for Maigo and me to talk honestly, stripping away all the awkwardness and baggage that comes with growing up.
An Asian kid who could be Maigo’s half-brother if she had one, sits cross-legged beside her. He’s dressed in lime green pajamas with a yellow striped belly, like a lizard. A hood is pulled up over his head. It has round black eyes, a cute black nose, a little smile and round green fins running down the back. He’s a poster child for cute, Japanese kids everywhere. He doesn’t notice my attention, or he doesn’t care. He’s enraptured with two toys in his hands—Nemesis and Hyperion. He’s making them fight.
“Eaarrgh!” The kid says, and then he laughs as Nemesis swipes Hyperion down with her tail.
“Having fun?” I ask, my voice laced with sarcasm and annoyance.
The kid pauses and looks up at me. When we make eye contact, I know, but his next words confirm it.
“You should lighten up, Hudson. It’s not every day you get to play as your inner child.”
Katsu Friggin’ Endo.
“Happens more than you’d think,” Maigo says, seemingly nonplussed by the man’s arrival, which I see as a desecration, in this private place.
I get to my small feet and clench my fists. “What are you doing here, Endo?”
He lowers the toys and smiles up at me. Even as a kid, that cocky smile just begs to be slapped off. “Violence against me will serve you as well here as it does in the real world.”
“Says the man who happily became a monster,” I say.
“The question is, why are you here. This meeting of minds is for Voices.”
I hear the capital V, but don’t understand the significance.
“It’s like a pilot,” Maigo explains, “but it’s closer to a relationship. Like two voices, separate but joined. For a time, Nemesis and I were one and the same as she formed from my body, but then I formed within her. When death seemed likely, I was expelled from her body.”
“And now Endo is her Voice,” I say.
“And I am Hyperion’s.”
“Which brings us back to the question of your presence,” Endo says.
“This is my living room,” I say. “My childhood you’re invading.”
“This is where we have met since Washington,” Maigo says. She seems to have no problem divulging information that I would consider private, if not confidential. “And while Dad hasn’t been a true Voice, he has had some experience—”
“Scylla,” Endo says, naming the Kaiju whose mind I controlled, albeit in a much more direct way than as a Voice seems to. If Scylla had opinions about that relationship, I never heard them. “I remember.
“I suppose he’s to be tolerated then,” Endo says, and when he cracks a smile, I know he’s just trying to egg me on. He might be merged with a monstrous alien Kaiju, but some things never change.
I cross my arms an
d don’t take the bait.
Endo’s smile fades and he turns to Maigo. “Why is our killer here?”
He’s referring to Hyperion, but his use of ‘our,’ which I take to mean himself, Nemesis, Nemesis Prime and Maigo, doesn’t make me happy. She’s been trying to separate herself from the monster for years. She doesn’t need Endo making her feel like part of the Kaiju family again.
“Hyperion never left,” she says. “Though his Voice died long ago.”
“Hyperion,” Endo says, trying the name on for size. He motions toward me with his head, but talks like I’m not here. “Did he name it?”
“I did,” Maigo says, looking the young Endo in the eyes. “You should know, I remember it. Our death. At the hands of this robot. As well as you do now. As well as Nemesis. But without the original Voice, Hyperion is mine to control. The AI sees Nemesis as a threat, but will not take action without my say, which I might add, is why she still has a head, and you’re here at all.”
They stare at each other in silence.
“Don’t forget that I have been the Voice for both,” Maigo says, her voice deadly serious. “Gestorumque are powerful rage machines designed for mass destruction, and the slaughter and consumption of smaller beings. Hyperion was created for a more singular purpose.”
She doesn’t say what that purpose is. Doesn’t need to. The giant robot was clearly created to kill Gestorumque.
God, that’s a mouthful, I think. I’ll stick with Kaiju.
“And right now,” Maigo says. “There are two Gestorumque to deal with.”
Endo turns his head up like he can see through the ceiling above, like there is an actual sky over us. “And more on the way.” Then he flinches. A shiver runs through his body.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, ashamed by the concern in my voice.
“C-can’t you feel them?” Endo asks.
Maigo shivers next and through her, I feel them, too. Kaiju. Three of them, one of whom feels very familiar. “Scylla.”
“Karkinos and Typhon, too.” Endo adds. “Our brother and sister. But they lack Voices. They’re...in Japan. Tokyo. My home...”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Maigo says, “but hope they are successful.”
I put a hand on my forehead. “Wait, now we’re rooting for the monsters that wiped out our nation’s capitol?”
“There are things far worse than Voiceless Gestorumque,” Endo says.
Gestorumque with Voices, I think. Like the one Maigo chased away.
“Nemesis will always hate Hyperion,” Endo says to Maigo.
“And Hyperion will always see her as a threat,” Maigo counters.
Endo leans forward and smiles. “She will never forget you. Or the strength you gave her. As long as you are Hyperion’s Voice, you have nothing to fear from Nemesis.” Endo looks at me. “Nor do you, or the rest of humanity.”
“You really think you can control her?” I ask.
But before Endo can answer, his eyes go wide with a strange kind of earnest fear. “Pull up,” he says, and then he shouts, “Jon, pull up!”
I snap out of the dreamlike state, bewildered and confused by the view ahead of me. The blue gray surface warbles. A voice fills my ears. Alessi. “Pull up, Jon! You’re going to crash in the water!”
The ocean! That’s what’s beneath me.
I pull up hard and am pressed against the drone’s back as it angles upward and its VTOL engines kick in. I feel the tug of water against my toes, but then we’re airborne again.
After running through a collection of rarely thought, and even more rarely spoken cusswords, I confirm that Collins and Woodstock are both still clinging to their drones. I set a more leisurely pace toward the shore. “Maigo, you copy?”
“I’m here, Dad,” she says. “You okay?”
“Fine. You and Endo can meet us at the Crow’s Nest.”
“Endo is gone,” she says.
Figures.
“Endo?” Alessi says. “You saw him?”
“Sort of,” I say. “But he’s alive and still annoying. I can tell you later. Right now, I need you to catch me up on what’s going on in Japan.”
“Nothing good,” Alessi says. “Hawkins and Lilly are there.”
I’m relieved to hear that Hawkins successfully reconnected with Lilly and that both are safe, but I’m more interested in what’s happening with the second Kaiju. “Patch me in to Hawkins.”
“We’re connected,” Alessi says.
I hear a click and don’t wait for a verbal confirmation that we’re connected. “Hawkins, what’s the situation there?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Hawkins says, sounding a little like he’s just woken from a dream where he was naked and late for a test.
“Pretty sure I would,” Hudson replied, feeling close to the same. “What happened?”
28
The very human-like Typhon stood knee-deep in the sea, arms slack by its sides, eyes on the alien Kaiju, who had stopped twitching in the bay and focused on the newcomers. Scylla strode up beside Typhon. The hammerhead Kaiju was shorter than her brother, but her more monstrous appearance more than made up for it. Arriving on Typhon’s other side was the far larger Karkinos, whose girth was unrivaled, even by the newcomer. In some ways, he was more like Nemesis than the other two, with large spikes running down his back, and a long, blade-tipped tail, but he looked more like Nemesis on alien steroids. His power also made him slower than Typhon and Scylla, and far slower than the thing they were facing down.
“We should name that thing,” Lilly said from the X-35’s cockpit.
Future Betty hovered a mile over the bay, invisible to Kaiju and military alike. Hawkins was in the back, sitting across from the still bound Alicio Brice, watching the action through the floor, which was projecting the scene below—the same view that was being projected onto the vehicle’s smooth roof so that anyone above would effectively see right through them. Hawkins lowered his hands to the floor and moved them apart, zooming in on the action.
“That usually falls within Jon’s purview,” Hawkins said.
“Purview?” Lilly said. “Geez, you’re old. Maigo named the robot, so I’m claiming this one.”
Hawkins had no desire to argue about something like the monster’s name, and he knew that Jon might usurp her choice anyway. The official report containing Kaiju names was his to write.
“Giger,” she said.
“Giger?” Hawkins had no idea what the name meant.
“Oh, yes,” Brice said. “I see it. Excellent choice.”
“Brownie points for the mad scientist,” Lilly said to Brice, and then to Hawkins, “H.R. Giger designed Ridley Scott’s alien.” She pointed at the floor, toward the creature facing off with Prime’s brood. “That looks like something he would have come up with.”
“It’s moving,” Hawkins said, watching the creature move toward the others, stepping further into Tokyo Bay and a little further from the city. Lilly cleared her throat and Hawkins said, “Giger is moving.”
The twitching creature stepped toward the other Kaiju, moving with careful steps, legs coiled, ready to leap back.
“How is this possible?” Hawkins asked Brice.
“The Aeros sent Giger to—”
“Not Giger. The other three. Nemesis killed them.. I was there.”
Lilly leaned her head back. “We were there.”
“I saw them die,” Hawkins said.
“Just as you saw Nemesis die. But that monster still roams the Earth as well.” Brice waved his bound hands in the air, like he smelled something foul. “I apologize for my combative language. It’s a personality flaw I have been simultaneously trying to rid myself of, and do more often, so Cole doesn’t notice my proclivities differ from those of my brothers. And you are correct. The Kaiju who perished in Washington, D.C. are still dead, and on ice, literally. Their corpses are in Antarctica.”
Hawkins glared at him. “Then these things are like—?”
&nbs
p; “Me,” Brice said. “Yes. They’re clones, with control mechanisms implanted into their minds at birth. Unlike Nemesis, these Kaiju were grown without human DNA. What you see down there are shells, controlled by human operators safe on GOD’s aircraft carrier.”
As if to prove this point, Scylla and Typhon broke in different directions, moving fast through the bay. With the city behind it, Giger twisted back and forth, watching the three Kaiju, but not attacking. When the alien Giger was flanked on both sides, the standoff continued. The opponents sized up the others.
Hawkins wasn’t sure how smart Giger was, but it clearly didn’t see the three monsters as potential friends. But it had yet to attack. Was it afraid?
He didn’t think so.
“Why play with fire?” Hawkins asked. “These things are powerful enough to lay waste to entire cities in an afternoon.”
“Keep in mind that I’m speaking for GOD, not myself,” Brice said, and then he continued. “In the face of overwhelming odds from the outer reaches of space, Cole decided that fighting fire with fire was our best chance of survival.”
Hawkins shook his head. “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster.”
“An oft used trope,” Brice said, “Except in this case, becoming a monster might be the only way the human race survives.”
“Hey, Dad,” Lilly said from the front, “Before you argue the point, keep in mind that some of us are already monsters.”
“You’re not a monster,” he said.
“She threatened to skewer my testicles,” Brice said. “With her talons. Even if you shared her sentiment, you lack the talons.” He held up his bound hands before Hawkins could reply. “The point is, it might be time to reassess what defines a monster, seeing past what’s on the outside and evaluating what is on the inside.”
“I’d give you more brownie points,” Lilly said, “if I didn’t think you were actually referring to dissecting me.”
Brice sighed. “Cole is misguided, ruthless and terrifying, but there is a chance he might be our best hope of surviving what comes next.”
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