Project Maigo (20 page)

Endo, eyes wide, reaches into his pocket, removes a device and pushes a button.

“…on top of you!” Woodstock’s voice suddenly fills my ear. “Do you copy? She’s right—”

He doesn’t need to finish his sentence. The building shakes again, and we know exactly what’s happening. “Copy that,” I reply, trying to sound unfazed by everything. “Get into position and stand by.” I turn to Endo. “I’d start running, if I were you.”

He does run, but not the direction I expect. He comes at me, reaching into his black sport coat. He removes a slender box from the inner pocket, opens it and pulls out what looks like a black swim cap with white circles all over it. “Put this on.”

I do what he says, but ask, “What is this?”

“It will boost the strength of your interface with Maigo.”

I put my hand up to the headset in my ear, identical to the one Endo had worn when he controlled Gordon, and me. “But this...”

“Is just the transmitter.” He slides the tight hat onto my head. Feels like my beanie cap.

“But you weren’t—”

He taps his head. “Surgical implant.” He looks back over his shoulder while the building continues to shake beneath our feet.

I’ve got a long list of questions, about how things work, about safety and protocol, but we’re out of time. The sound of rushing water rises up over the building’s roof.

Endo removes his coat, revealing the base jumping parachute that is his escape route—the very same method of egress I’d attempted to use by falling over the building’s edge. “Good luck,” he says, and sprints away.

I might normally watch his fall, see if the chute deploys in time to keep him from becoming a stain, but the massive form rising up on the other side of the roof has me transfixed. Water is whisked away by the wind, and the giant face, now above me, turns her brown eyes toward me. I see fury and anger, terrifying in its closeness and scope.

This...was a mistake.

I’m a dead man.

A sacrifice, like Alexander Tilly.

I can feel it with every fiber of my being.

And then I can’t.

Maigo’s giant eyes shift back and forth, searching for something that is no longer there. Endo. His disappearance and my relative safety has her confused. Her giant body begins tilting to the side. If she sees Endo, he’s in a world of trouble, and so am I, because her rage is blind. In her pursuit of the man who would have killed me, she might plow right through this building.

“Endo,” I say quickly and quietly, “Stay close to the building. She’s looking for you.” I don’t wait for a reply. “Woodstock, are you ready?”

“Good to go,” he says.

Nemesis continues to lean, her head now level with the building, and I’m sure she’s going to spot Endo. I limp toward her, fighting against every one of my instincts that are screaming like terrified, high-pitched Japanese anime girls. “Maigo!”

She either doesn’t hear me or she’s ignoring me. I take a deep breath and catch the scent of ocean still dripping from her maw. I shout louder this time, my voice scratchy with desperation. “Maigo!”

The beast pauses.

The one eye I can still see shifts toward me. I can see my reflection in her pitch black pupil; I’m bleeding and leaning to the side, eyebrows turned up in abject fear. It’s an embarrassing image. But it’s erased as she stands up straight again, looking down at me. A hot breath, rank with the scent of oceanic decay washes over me. Nearly knocks me to my knees—from the stink, not the force.

“Woodstock,” I whisper, trying not to move my mouth. “Now.”

I hear the distant whoosh of a rocket being fired, but I try not to react. Instead, I sit down. Nemesis’s eyes track me as I move, perhaps confused by my attempt at communication. Or perhaps trying to understand why she’s compelled to protect me. Maybe she’s just remembering the last time I stood atop an apartment building like this on the other side of the ruined North End.

“It’s the hat,” I say, touching the tight blue cap on my head. “Looks weird, right?”

No reaction. We’re definitely not communicating in any meaningful way right now. The part of her that is Maigo seems to respond to the name, but maybe doesn’t even know why.

Doesn’t matter, in a few seconds I’m going to have a front row seat to the madness that is Nemesis’s mind. I lie back on the scorching hot, tar roof, feeling its pliable surface give a little. If there’s a chance I’m going to end up in a coma, I want to do it lying down.

The building shakes as Nemesis shifts her weight, perhaps bored or impatient, preparing to leave. But she doesn’t get a chance. The rocket arrives with a roar, on target and unavoidable. It strikes the side of Nemesis’s head. Her temple, if she’s got one. But there’s no explosion other than the outer shell shattering and flitting away. Nemesis reacts less than I would if a mosquito flew into the side of my head.

Before the device that remains can fall away, four sharp claws snap out from the sides and clutch to Nemesis’s rough skin. A whirring sound pierces the air—the machine’s diamond tipped drill, burrowing into Nemesis’s skin. The neural implant looks tiny on the side of her massive face, but it appears to be doing its job.

Nemesis huffs in frustration, looking back and forth for the source of the irritating sound, and I realize the mosquito comparison is even more accurate. It’s nothing but a—

“Ahh!”

Seizing pain lances through my body, which arches involuntarily to the point I fear my back is going to fold over on itself. Then everything goes black.

When I awake, I find myself standing.

The floor beneath my feet is tile. Hard and white.

There’s a wall of windows to my right. A view of Boston, unscathed by Nemesis. But something is off. My perspective. I’m...short.

I look down. My hands are small. Tan. I’m wearing the clothing of a young girl just home from prep school. A Hello Kitty backpack rests at my feet.

Oh, shit. I know where I am.

“It’s okay, Maigo,” a sinister sounding male voice says.

I turn my eyes slowly up, pausing for a moment to watch the dark red fluid trace a path through the squares of grout on the floor. Then I see him. His face, pale and fat. Eyes burning like blue dwarf stars.

I hate him. For who he was and for what he’s done.

“It was an accident,” he says.

I know he’s lying, but I can’t say anything. Instead I stare at the motionless form of my mother, her manicured nails soiled with blood.

Mother...

In a blink, I’m me again.

But I’m still short.

The world has changed, but I know where I am.

I’m home. Christmas Eve. 1979.

No...No!
I try to shout, but can’t. I’m on autopilot, reliving a nightmare.

27

The shouting stopped ten minutes ago. But it didn’t end like normal, which would have been slamming doors. It just...stopped. Suddenly. Mid-shout. I weep for several minutes, clutching my knees in the corner of my bedroom, bathed in the rainbow glow of a ceramic Christmas tree. When I stand, it’s not out of bravery, but curiosity. Perhaps things are okay?

Maybe they’re still wrapping my presents?

I decide to check. I move slowly across my room, pausing every time the radiator hisses or clicks. But I don’t make a sound. I open my door, pushing against it with my foot to keep the tight latch from thumping open the way it does.

The stairs are covered in thick rug and don’t creak, so the next part will be easy. Still, I take it slowly, lying down beside the banister at the top of the stairs, peering down into the home’s foyer. The dining room to the right is lit by the warm glow of electric candles in each window. To the left, the living room blinks with light from the TV.
They’re watching a show
, I think, and I start down the stairs, confident that neither of my parents will move until a commercial.

When I reach the bottom, I slowly peek around the doorway, but my view is blocked by the Christmas tree mom and I put up and decorated. The ornaments are old. 1950s stuff. The bulbs are the fat kind, not the small ones my friends have. My favorite part is the candy canes. They’re real, and no matter how many I steal, my mom keeps resupplying them. I crouch and look beneath the tree. The red and green striped blanket is still draped around the base, but there are no gifts.

Maybe they’re wrapping after the show? Or during and just haven’t put them under the tree yet? Most of my friends still believe Santa does all that work, but I caught my parents last year. Got spanked for it, but now I know the truth. Remembering last year’s spanking makes me wary. But curiosity is blind to the past. I lie down and slide behind the tree, pausing to take a deep breath of its pine scent.

When my father laughs at the television program, the last of my fear melts away. The fight is definitely over. With eager eyes, I push myself up over the side of the couch. My father sits at the far end, turned toward the TV in the corner of the room. My eyes move to the TV.
The Golden Girls
. Dad doesn’t normally watch this. Certainly not alone. But I don’t see—

A pair of feet on the floor catch my attention. I lift myself up a little higher and find my mother, sprawled out on the rug. There’s blood on her forehead. A scream rises in my throat, but I’m shushed.

The part of me that is an adult spectator is confused by the noise. That’s not how I remember it. When I look up, there is a girl standing above my mother. The me from minutes ago: plaid dress, Hello Kitty backpack, Asian. Maigo is here with me. Watching. She has an index finger pressed to her lips. “Shh! He will hear you!”

But he didn’t hear me. I contained the scream, slunk back out of the room, ran upstairs and used my parents’ rotary phone to call the police. I never saw my father again. My mother recovered from the attack that broke ribs and knocked her unconscious, but she was never really the same.

The memory resumes, playing out differently than I remember.

I step out from behind the tree and say to my father, “You did this.”

He looks startled. Hurt. “No! I found her like this. She did it to herself.”

I look back down at my mother. She’s covered in blood. Shot.

“She killed herself, Jon.”

“She wouldn’t,” I say. I’ve never believed anything so firmly in all my life.

“She
did
.” My father stands to his feet, his shoes squeaking on the white tile floor.

I shake my fists. “You killed her!”

My father frowns, crouches by my mother’s body and moves her hand.

“Leave her alone,” I demand.

My father looks me in the eyes, a rare calm expression on his face. “Your mother killed herself, Maigo,” my father says, “but she killed you first.”

The gun, now in my mother’s limp hand, is pointed at me.

The explosion makes me flinch. But I feel no pain. No impact. I turn to find Maigo, clutching her stomach, tears streaking down her smooth cheeks. She falls to her knees, dark almond eyes locked on me.
I’ve see those eyes before...
Then she pitches forward, landing hard on the cold tile floor, a pool of blood spreading from her core, mingling with her mother’s.

I feel the pain of this moment acutely. The heartbreak. The rage. It was very nearly my own fate. And therein lies the heart of my connection to the monster that is Nemesis. I don’t just sympathize with a murdered young girl, I understand her. That thirst for vengeance. I’ve hid from it all my life, but it’s there, in my dreams. I’m not sure where my father is, or if he’s alive, but I’ve thought of finding him more than once. My position at the DHS would make it easy. But then what? Kick the shit out of an old man?

“What if he’d killed her?” Maigo asks from the floor, her dead eyes looking at me? “What if he’d killed
you
?”

“I...don’t know,” I tell her. But I do know. I already answered this question a year ago when I offered up Alexander Tilly for execution, and I did it without an ounce of guilt. But it’s still not the same. One guilty man doesn’t justify the killing of untold innocents. I attempt to say as much, but suddenly I feel strange.

My living room that is also Maigo’s high rise condo, disappears. I’m surrounded by darkness and otherworldly screams. I’ve never heard anything so horrible. Then pain. Electric. Burning. I’ve never felt such searing pain. I feel my mind slipping away. And then, just as quickly, I’m pulled back to lucidity, and more pain. Never ending. I’m being driven mad, all the while a flow of information is flooding my mind, drowning whatever I had been.

A moral code.

Unshakable.

Indisputable.

And for those that break the code, death is the only recourse. No mercy.

A doubt lingers.

The pain returns, worse than before. I scream, joining the chorus of shrieking voices.

The flow of information repeats. I see images. Murders. Rapes. Unspeakable violence. I feel the difference between what is right and wrong. My anguish is slowly replaced by rage for the perpetrators. I want to stop them.