Project Maigo (6 page)

The Opera House was surrounded by ocean harbor on three sides. From where she stood, Olivia could see the water leading inland beneath the massive steel arch of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It was a view she’d seen on a number of occasions as the city’s nightlife correspondent, but this time, it was different.

A pulsing orange light, just above the water, glided toward the Opera House. The wavering glow was beautiful. Mesmerizing.
If this is part of the show
, she thought,
I might actually be impressed
.

The orchestra began tuning up—a melodic mix of instruments, rising and falling as the musicians tightened strings and loosened lungs. The show was about to begin.

Olivia felt her attention tugged back toward the orchestra—she’d spent too much time not talking already—but the orange glow was just fifty feet from shore now, illuminating the audience with a calming radiance.
Like one of those orange salt crystals
, she thought.

The camera man was the first to question the light’s beauty, primarily because he turned his lens away from Olivia and zoomed in on the light. The triangular swatch of color no longer appeared as a solid light source. It was liquid. Molten.

Alive.

“Oh bloody hell,” Jim whispered, pulling the shot back to reveal a massive, black form sliding out of the night.

Chuck, who could see the shot on a monitor in the studio, reacted next. His gasp was loud enough to make Olivia wince. On camera. Then he shouted, actually shouted, in her ear. “Olivia!”

She responded by taking a deep breath and rolling her neck. She didn’t want to lose her cool on television, but Chuck was—

“Olivia!” his voice was shrill this time. Full of fear.

Olivia didn’t hear the tone of his voice until after she’d shouted, “Get stuffed, ya fuck-wit!”

And just like that, all of Olivia’s childhood in bush country with four older brothers seeped through her defenses and ruined her career. But the strange part was, no one noticed. Not Chuck. Not Jim. The producers would have normally cut the live feed and started chewing her out already.

When something stepped into the light of the Opera House, providing Olivia, the orchestra and the seated guests a clear view, she understood that her language and demeanor would be forgotten or later considered justified. The next word out of her mouth was all the excuse she’d ever need.

“Nemesis.”

But it wasn’t Nemesis.

Although she hadn’t ever seen the creature in person, she had studied photos of it, just like nearly every other living soul on the planet. This...thing…shared some of the same features as Nemesis—thick and dark gray flesh, obsidian claws, bony protuberances and the orange, glowing membranes, but its body shape was all wrong. Nemesis stood three-hundred-feet tall. This creature stood no more than a hundred feet—nearly fifty of which must have been still underwater. It had no tail. None of the giant spikes on its back, nor the wing-hiding carapace. It was a smaller, sleeker model, but the look in its luminous yellow eyes was somehow worse than the brown-eyed glare of Nemesis. She didn’t see vengeance in these eyes.

Only hunger.

Presented with the journalistic opportunity of a lifetime, Olivia composed herself and stepped into the picture’s frame, aligning herself to the right so the monster could still be seen, rising out of the ocean, to her left.

The monster’s head vaguely resembled a hunched-forward hammerhead shark, in that its eyes were set to the sides of its horizontally elongated skull. Its lower jaw dropped open, revealing long, curved teeth that looked both fragile and deadly. A thick right arm reached up out of the water and dropped down on the marble walkway, sending a shockwave through the crowd.

The impact jarred everyone from their stunned immobility, and a collective scream of horror filled the night like an orchestra of the damned, voices booming off the granite stairway.

Olivia cringed at the noise, which drowned out her voice. But she kept reporting, commenting on the scene like no one watching through the TV could decipher what was happening.

The crowd’s scream, as harsh as it was, sounded like the gentle chirp of a cricket compared to the fog-horn roar that blasted from the monster’s open maw. Tendrils of saliva stretched out of the thing’s mouth, clinging to its teeth before losing their grip and spraying the fleeing crowd.

Warm air and the scent of rotting flesh washed over Olivia. She gagged, but maintained her composure. She faced the camera again, speaking unheard words, while the monster in the background reached into the crowd, swept its giant clawed hand to the side and lifted twenty well-dressed people into the air. Its hand gave a mighty squeeze, squelching out the few people still screaming in horror, and filling the air with the sound of snapping bones. It then scraped the victims over its lower jaw, depositing most of them into its mouth and impaling a few on its teeth. As the bodies slid down the long, smooth teeth, the creature reached out again, this time leaning forward.

Olivia knew that all hell was breaking loose behind her. She didn’t bother looking, but she could hear the monster feasting on the crowd. While safety in numbers normally didn’t apply, she felt the monster wouldn’t pay attention to a single person standing still. At least not while the chaos of a fleeing audience held its attention. She would be hailed as the world’s bravest reporter, her job secured for all eternity.

She stayed at her post, even when Jim glanced up, eyes wide, and ran away from his tripod-mounted camera. This is how she wanted the audience to remember her. Stalwart. Brave. Wrinkles be damned.

Then a two-ton, black hand slammed down atop her, smearing her into the granite, unnoticed by the monster above and quickly forgotten by the audience, as they watched the feast continue for ten more horrific minutes through the undamaged camera.

7

The view from the Crow’s Nest, the FC-P headquarters, is bleak, even after a year of clean-up. Located atop the tallest hill in Beverly, Massachusetts, we’re provided with a view of the surrounding city to the north, south and west. To the east is the blue ocean, as pristine as ever. But between us and the harbor is a mile of charred destruction. The far side of the harbor, in Salem, looks just as bad. The bridge between the two cities is still in ruins, but a temporary structure has been erected. The blackened remains were left in the wake of what I’ve come to call Nemesis’s ‘self-immolation.’ That orange blood, or whatever it is, ignites upon contact with the air. Expose enough of it, and you’ve got yourself something just short of a small nuclear blast, minus the radiation.

At first, I believed the explosive fluid was some kind of defense mechanism—wound the monster in the wrong place, and you pay the price. But later on, she purposely gouged out the membranes over her chest, using the resulting explosion to punch a hole through downtown Boston. If that wasn’t bad enough, her final stage, the bright white, winged goddess of vengeance, allowed her to focus sunlight into a powerful beam that incinerated Maigo’s murderous father, the building I stood on and the Hancock building, which nearly fell on my head. I call that particular attack her ‘divine retribution.’

Corny, I know, but I was a comic-book kid. Attacks need names. And oddly enough, the military asked for attack codenames, to more quickly communicate Nemesis’s tactics in the future. Of course, other than self-immolation and divine retribution, ‘smashing the living shit out of everything’ covers the rest of her attacks adequately.

I’ve looked at this slowly changing view of the devastation for the past year, not because it’s pretty, but because it reminds me that despite being part Maigo, Nemesis is also a monster. She destroyed my city. She attacked my country. She murdered thousands of innocents. And it’s my job to make sure that doesn’t ever happen again.

So in addition to investigating new sightings of the strange and otherworldly, my office—Cooper and Watson mostly—has been coordinating military strategies and deployments around the country, primarily on the coasts, since Nemesis can’t head inland without being noticed. While the military works on developing weapons capable of piercing Nemesis’s super-thick skin, we’re making sure that every mile of coast is protected. There are fighter jets in most small airports now, including Beverly airport. Harbors are protected by lines of howitzers or tanks. Our country’s coasts haven’t been this well protected since World War II.

We’re not under any delusions that we could actually stop her, though. The goal would be to simply slow her down, so people could evacuate. We’ve laid down wider highways leading away from all the highly populated coastal areas, built underground bunkers for those that can’t get away and deployed a growing fleet of buses, helicopters and jets, whose sole purpose in life is to assist in evacuations. Someone suggested building a massive wall around the country, but that’s obviously a horrible idea. And while the expense has been vast, the value of human life cannot be quantified in dollars.

“How long has he been standing there?” Rich Woodall, aka ‘Woodstock,’ is our fearless helicopter pilot. He’s an old vet. Fought in three wars. Flew birds for the U.S. Marine Corp for twenty-five years. At first glance, he’s not the kind of guy you’d want flying for you—messy gray hair and mustache, wild blue eyes and a surly personality, but he can fly like a bastard, and he’s willing to get up close and personal with a 300-foot tall behemoth. He’s whispering, but I can hear him just fine.

“Thirty minutes,” Watson replies. He’s not so good at whispering, and Woodstock shushes him even more loudly. Watson’s also the last person you’d expect to find in an elite government agency. Picture Chunk from
The Goonies
, all grown up, but how you imagined him, not how he actually turned out. Watson’s a good guy. The kind of friend everyone should have. And I owe him for setting me up with Collins. He’s a little OCD and can’t stop himself from timing people. Sometimes I stand here, just thinking about stuff, to see who will break for the bathroom first.

“Leave him alone,” Cooper says from the far side of the room. Her voice is muffled by whatever book, diagram or directory she’s got her nose buried in. “He’s thinking.”

“About what?” Woodstock asks.

I actually hear Watson shrug. He’s a bit...portly, and the shrug manages to push some air from his lungs. Poor guy. If we ever had to evacuate, he’d be the snack that slowed the monster down long enough for us to escape. “Ashley said he didn’t talk much on the way home. Called him a brood, which is actually an alien race in the X-Men comics, but I don’t think that’s what she meant.”

I hear the high-heeled clack of Cooper’s approach. Without seeing her, I can visualize her dark power suit, tightly tied-back raven hair and her thick-rimmed glasses. I’m dressed in my usual summer-time uniform of brown outdoorsy sneakers, cargo shorts, an orange t-shirt and my red beanie cap. My winter uniform includes the addition of a red hoodie sweatshirt. But let’s be honest, sixty percent of men under forty-five in New England wear the same uniform—minus the beanie—like we’re all part of some secret club that has little fashion sense and really warm legs. Or maybe we’re all just lazy douche bags.

Cooper is still kind of a stick in the mud and a scrooge with regulations, but she’s transformed herself over the past year. She nearly died when Nemesis self-immolated in Beverly harbor. Although we were far enough away to avoid being burned, the shockwave shattered the windows—which are now two-inch-thick tactical glass—impaling Cooper. After physical therapy, she kept the same workout schedule, and she now has a sexy librarian look about her. If only Watson could get moving, he might have a chance. The affection is there. The attraction...well, he’s a grown-up Chunk. “Leave him be,” she says, shooing the duo away. “You know he’s—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, lifting my hand in a backwards wave. “I’m done thinking. Anyone catch the Sox game last night?” When I turn around, my team is looking at me like I’ve got Nemesis drool on my face. “What?”

“You haven’t said a word since arriving,” Cooper says.

“Allow me to translate,” Woodstock says, wandering back to his station, which is basically a lounge chair when he’s not flying. He kicks back and crosses his legs. “She expected you to have come to some kind of conclusion or insight while starring off into the blue.”

“How poetic,” Cooper says. She’s not entertained, by either of us.

Watson comes through for me. “Five to three. Sox over the Yankees.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard. On to the—” I search the room—a 1000-square-foot space on the fourth floor of the brick mansion that serves as our home and headquarters. There are ten work stations, most of them unused, and a large, ornate staircase at the back of the space. What once was a highly organized office of mostly nothing, has become a partially organized (thanks to Cooper) mess of case files, sent to us from every conceivable law enforcement agency, local and federal, going back fifty years, long before the inception of digital storage. But there’s one thing missing. “Where’s Collins?”

At the mention of Collins’s name, Buddy, aka Bud or Buddy-Boy, depending on who is talking to the dog, runs up to me, an excited look in his brown Australian shepherd eyes. He looks for Collins, his favorite, despite the fact that he belongs to Watson, and settles for me when he can’t find her. His head appears beneath my right hand, and I dutifully pet him.