Project Maigo (37 page)

I know a good action hero would say something antagonistic right now. And part of me really wants to pour salt on his fresh wound. But screw that. Not dying sounds better. While Gordon lets out a horrible sounding wail, I drag myself across the roof. I’m trying to get up, but I haven’t regained full control of my body yet. I worry that he already broke my back, but I can move all my limbs, I’m just not very coordinated yet.

I’ve made it only ten feet when Gordon turns around to face me. Without saying a word, he crosses the distance between us with three long strides. I try to squirm away, but I don’t make it far. He grips the armor over my back and lifts me off the ground. I feel like a scrawny kid in the hands of a bully. He drags me to the side of the roof, facing the Capitol ruins. He lifts me up, but doesn’t throw me over the side, which would kill me right quick.

He wants me to watch.

Karkinos and Nemesis are squaring off, eyes locked on each other, despite the continuing barrage from the Air Force. Missiles pepper both Kaiju, but they barely react to the explosions. The real threat is each other. But Nemesis is taking a beating. Gouts of her thick, protective skin are being knocked away by the modern barrage. Karkinos fares much better as the behemoth’s body is mostly covered by thick plates of armor. It’s probably not even feeling the missiles.

“In the end,” Gordon says, “I knew there could only be one.”

“How
Highlander
of you,” I quip.

Gordon shakes the funny out of me, sobering me up.

“Watch,” he says. “The ancient Greeks got it right. The children of the gods always usurp their parents.”

A missile streaks in, missing Karkinos and carrying on toward Nemesis. It strikes the side of her head and detonates, making her flinch away, either from the pain or the loud noise right next to her ear.

Karkinos takes advantage of the brief distraction and charges. Nemesis reels back, but it’s too late. Karkinos swings her massive arms again and again, pounding Nemesis like a boxer on the ropes. Nemesis backs away, but the constant stream of missiles stumbles her up.

Still the faster of the two, Nemesis spins and swings her tail out. The trident-tipped tail is capable of sweeping through entire buildings, but Karkinos’s armored legs take the blow without any damage. Nemesis turns around just in time to face the rushing Karkinos, but there is little she can do about the charging behemoth.

Karkinos reaches up with both of its giant pincer-like claws and catches Nemesis’s arms.

Nemesis, the taller of the two, bites down on the back of Karkinos’s neck, but the armor plating fends off what could have been a killer strike. While Nemesis tries to peel the armor away, those giant pincers compress her forearms until the pain becomes unbearable. Nemesis lets out a high pitched roar, turning her head to the sky. She pulls back, struggling to free herself from Karkinos’s grasp before her arms are severed.

With a slick tear, Nemesis’s black skin peels away. She falls back, the skin of her forearms removed like sleeves.

Karkinos puts one of the slabs of skin in her mouth and shakes it around before spitting it out.

Nemesis looks spent, while Karkinos seems almost euphoric.

But then, surprising me and Gordon, who flinches, Nemesis charges with a roar, reaching for Karkinos’s head with her more vulnerable, but still powerful, hands.

Karkinos’s defense is unconventional, but brutally effective. The Kaiju lowers its head, tilting forward, so the great, blade-like spikes at the top of its back come over and down like butcher blades. As Nemesis comes in close, the massive blades come down on her shoulders, cutting through her black flesh, severing what little skin held it all in place. Great sheets of black fall from Nemesis’s body now, totally exposing her to injury from Karkinos and the military.

In Boston, this pure white form of hers served a purpose. She unfurled the reflective wings hidden beneath the carapace of her back and reflected the sun’s light into a powerful, burning beam of retribution. But now, in the dark, with the scene lit by burning buildings and moonlight, I don’t think that’s an option for her. Her greatest weapon has become her weakness.

Nemesis falls to her knees, driven down by the blades in her shoulders. She doesn’t move when Karkinos stands back up, pulling the blades free. Red blood flows over her white form, reminding anyone who is watching that she is not fully Kaiju, that flowing through the monster, is human blood.

Gordon begins to chuckle.

Karkinos turns around, winding up its tail for a strike. While the bladed end is missing, the appendage is still covered in bony plates and hooked spikes. The blow comes quick, kicking up a cyclone of ash as it sails over the ground and pounds Nemesis in the side.

Nemesis falls to her side, eyes closed, body limp. The ground shakes when she lands hard, her body still. Unmoving. I wait for some sign of life, but see nothing.

The Air Force’s continuing missile barrage targets Karkinos now. The giant’s back takes the damage while the monster turns toward the White House.

Gordon holds me up a little higher.

Karkinos roars and steps in our direction.

I’ve never really wondered what it would be like to be a sacrificial virgin, but it looks like I’m going to find out.

50

The White House roof quakes with each of Karkinos’s footsteps, jolting more and more as the immensely heavy Kaiju nears. Its yellow eyes remain fixed on me, which seems impossible, because I’m so friggin small. It would be like me looking into the eyes of a cockroach before I squashed it.

“You’ve won,” I say to Gordon. “You don’t need to do this.”

“Cowardice is a new tactic for you, Jon,” Gordon says. I hate that he uses my first name, like we really know each other. Like we used to be pals. I’ve only ever known the man as a monster. “I thought you were stronger than that.”

“I’m not talking about my life,” I say, pausing as Karkinos takes another thunderous step forward. “I’m talking about the rest of the world. You have your own Nemesis now. No one can touch you. Just go live your life.”

“I’ve seen what you can do,” Gordon says, tapping his head with his free hand. “What Endo tried to do to me. Do you really believe the government, or fucking Zoomb for that matter, will let a 300-foot-tall monster live peacefully? Besides, this world needs to be judged. It sings for it.”

“Nemesis has shown mercy,” I point out. “You can’t—”

“Nemesis has shown weakness,” he says, placing a hand over his chest. “I don’t blame her. I took her heart. The engine that should have driven her resides in me. The world’s judgment has fallen to me.”

“So Karkinos is to be the next Nemesis?” I ask.

“Karkinos...” Gordon tries out the name. He grins. “I like it. But Karkinos is not Nemesis. It’s a tool.” His grin becomes wicked. “
I
am Nemesis. And I will judge the world and everyone in it. Starting with you.”

With a final stomp that seems to shudder the whole planet, Karkinos stops its approach within the corner of the U.S. Treasury Building, a good 500 feet away. Even at this distance, it’s huge, rising high up into the air. It feels strange, being small again, like Karkinos is cheating. I knew what it felt like to engage this monster as equals.

“Jon Hudson,” Gordon says, “and the rest of this miserable city, I sentence you to death by fire.”

Karkinos reaches its giant claws up toward the large glowing membranes on its chest.

It’s going to self-immolate!

I’m about to ask Gordon if he’s serious, but then I remember that he’s built to withstand the scorching flame. When the fires die down and everything for several miles to the west is a wasteland, Gordon will be the only thing left standing.

The massive claws slip inside the membranes, and I swear I see a smile on the Kaiju’s fanged mouth. It might just be reflecting Gordon’s pleasure, but I take personal offense at the grin. I lift both fists, giving the giant a defiant double middle finger.

The Kaiju pulls its hands free with a slurp.

Twin rivers of orange fluid pour from Karkinos’s chest like an explosive Niagara Falls.

The delay between puncture and ignition is just a few seconds.

My thoughts turn to Collins. If she’s behind Karkinos, she should make it through this. I send her my love and close my eyes.

The rumble of my death begins, but it sounds different. Strange. In fact, I don’t think the explosion will even register before I’m vaporized.

My eyes snap open.

Gordon is shouting in anger.

A wall of white blocks my view. Sparkling feathers hang from wings spanning 500 feet.

Nemesis!

Maigo...

In her white form she’s—

KRAKOOM!

The explosive force knocks Gordon back. I fly from his hand and slide across the rooftop.

My eyes turn back to Nemesis.

Her massive wings shake violently, but they remain solid, blocking the inferno. Bright orange flames rush by, hundreds of feet overhead. I can feel the heat, but it’s only like a hot summer day. Flames streak out to the sides as well, but Nemesis’s proximity to Karkinos means that she is taking the brunt of this attack, saving what remains of the city.

Saving me.

Again.

Tears fill my eyes. I know she can’t survive this.

The burst of fire fades.

The wings stop shaking and immediately, the large reflective panels people call feathers start to fall away, fluttering to the ground like diamonds, except that one side has been charred black.

Nemesis falls to one knee, trailing a column of smoke. The stench is revolting, not just because of the smell, but because I know what it’s from. Nemesis has been cooked.

She falls in on herself slowly.

Still breathing.

But as she drops down, Karkinos is revealed, standing. Steam rises from its drained chest. Its face is frozen in anger.

Totally frozen.

That’s when I notice the change in the Kaiju’s body. A straight black line has been etched into its armor, head to toe.

Understanding what has happened, I hop to my feet and nearly cheer as Karkinos comes apart. Tons of flesh separate, as strands of viscous fluid stretch out between the halves and snap. Karkinos’s body, cut clean through, falls down, and then apart. When the monster’s cleaved body hits the ground with twin thunderous booms I can feel in my teeth, I let out that victory cry.

Nemesis didn’t just save me, or Washington, she saved us all.

But I don’t think Nemesis deserves the credit. Left to her own devices, that spirit of vengeance would have happily eradicated the human race. It was the human side of her, a little girl, who made the difference and was willing to give her life—again.

When Gordon screams, I flinch back, having forgotten all about him. He’s staring out at Karkinos’s split body. He starts punching himself. Hard. Then he remembers that there is someone else he can take his anger out on.

He reels around and charges toward me.

With his long stride, he’ll reach me in seven steps. He makes it only four, though.

“Hey!”

The voice is young and feminine, but her appearance is anything but. Lilly leaps at Gordon from the side, and drives her legs into his arm. She’s far smaller than him, but she is strong. Really strong. Gordon is slammed to the side, decimating an actual air conditioning unit.

While he pries himself free from the metal case now twisted around his body, lost in a frenzy, I expect Lilly to press the attack. Maybe go for something vital. His throat possibly. But she doesn’t. She waits.

Hawkins steps up next to her. Like me, he’s taken a beating, but he’s alive.

“We weren’t done with you,” he says to Gordon, holding up a small device. I recognize it as the transmitter Endo gave him.

For the arrows.

My eyes widen when I see the collection of arrows jutting out of Gordon’s body.

Holy...

Hawkins pushes the button.