Project Nemesis (A Kaiju Thriller) (21 page)

30

Katsu
Endo believed in loyalty, perhaps to a fault, but he was at least aware of this personality flaw. So he made it a habit to scrutinize every order he followed and determine whether it fell within the range of what he believed was acceptable. So far, the seven people he had killed, starting with Master Sergeant Lenny Wilson, had been at the command of General Gordon. He had no real reason to kill any of his victims other than the fact that Gordon had asked him to. But each and every one of those deaths
were
acceptable because they kept Endo close to the one thing in his life that gave him a sense of purpose.

And it wasn’t Gordon.

It was the creature unearthed from the frozen cave in Alaska. He needed to know what it was, where it came from and why. Those were the questions that drove him since laying eyes on the behemoth. As a child in Japan, Endo had spent a good portion of every day watching cartoons and movies that were filled with giant monsters called “
kaiju
.” Godzilla,
Gamera
,
Mothra
and so many more filled his imagination, and when his parents died, they kept him company. The giant monsters of his youth were remembered with the same fondness as his parents, but like them, the monsters would always be intangible.

But then he saw the giant creature in Alaska, and he knew he was wrong.
Kaiju
did
exist,
they’d just been killed, or were hiding in the ocean or were simply waiting to be created on a secret island somewhere. The possibilities were endless, and his desire to uncover the truth about
kaiju
drove him like a religious zealot.

But in five years he hadn’t learned very much at all. Then, somehow, the General told him he had acquired a sample of the creature, and suddenly all of their work at
BioLance
came into focus. Gordon had no real interest in micro-biology, transplantation technology or organ growth—he simply wanted to build a lab capable of studying the creature. That’s what Endo had believed, anyway. Then he found out about the General’s heart and how he intended to use an organ grown using the creature’s DNA to save his own life.

Endo had never experienced anger so primal before, and he had nearly acted on it. But killing the General fell outside his range of what was acceptable. If Gordon died,
Zoomb
would have no need for Endo. It would mean never getting his answers. Keeping Gordon alive had been and would continue to be his first priority. The man was his only avenue to the knowledge he sought.

Despite that, Gordon had just gone outside what Endo felt was acceptable. When the elevator doors opened, the pair had walked up to the receptionist’s desk and asked to see Paul Stanton, CEO of the Boston-based tech company. When she gave an earnest smile and said that Stanton was on the phone and would be available shortly, Gordon took her head and smashed it down on the desktop.

“She’s dead,” Endo
said,
his hand on the girl’s wrist. He fought against his anger at Gordon. On the way up, Gordon had explained that he would be demanding any and all information the company had on the creature recovered from Alaska. This fell directly in line with Endo’s own goals. What the General hadn’t explained was that he would make these demands under the threat of extreme violence, severing all ties with the company and all access to any future discoveries.

But it was too late. The girl was dead and the act was caught on at least two different security cameras.

But maybe there is a way to—

Security guards burst through the door leading to
Zoomb’s
offices. Three of them entered the sparsely decorated lobby while one remained next to the door, propping it open with his foot.

Amateurs.

“Don’t move!” the chubbier of the guards shouted. “Don’t fucking move.” His hands shook while he kept the weapon leveled on Gordon. In fact, all four men were all but ignoring Endo.

It would be so easy, he thought, but he just slowly raised his hands. As long as he kept his hands clear here, he might find a way to secure a position in the company. Until then, he would aid Gordon, but not in a way that could incriminate him. He had arrived with the General, but he had yet to commit a crime on camera.

Besides, Gordon didn’t really need Endo’s help with the dirty work.

“She’s dead!” a skinny guard said, checking for a pulse on the girl’s neck.

“Hands on the back of your head!” chubby yelled.
“Now!”

Endo complied.

Gordon did not.

“Do you know who I am?” Gordon asked, taking a step closer.

“Doesn’t matter who you are,” the chubby guard said. “Hands on your head or I will—”

Gordon lunged forward and punched the man’s neck. The man toppled to the ground gasping for air through a shattered windpipe. His death would be slow and agonizing. While the guard dropped to the floor, Gordon reached around to his back and drew his silenced pistol. The man behind the desk died first as a .50-caliber round ripped through his nose and removed the entire back of his head, splattering it against the
Zoomb
logo mounted to the wall.

Before the other two guards could react, Gordon twisted, ducked and fired two more times, coating the ceiling with gore. It all happened in a blur. Gordon had been a strong man before, but not exactly spry. Now he moved as fast as Endo.
Maybe faster.

Gordon caught the now headless man in the doorway and tossed him into the lobby, where his blood pooled on the white marble floor. He then caught the door before it closed and turned to Endo, whose hands were still raised.

“Impressed?” Gordon asked.

Endo lowered his hands.

“Let’s go,” Gordon said.

Endo stepped over the expanding pools of blood and the bodies that created them. He took hold of the door when he reached it and motioned for Gordon to go inside. “After you, sir,” he said, but it came out quiet.

“Had to be done,” Gordon said, perhaps sensing Endo’s disapproval.

Endo gave a nod, but knew Gordon was wrong. Not one of these people needed to die. They could have waited for Stanton and spoke to him without drawing too much attention. Hell, they could have tortured Stanton for the information and Endo wouldn’t have cared, but this just didn’t make sense.

It was bloodlust.

And although the General had never shied away from violence, it always served a purpose.
Their purpose.
But now...
Is he coming unhinged? Did the DNA bonded to his heart change his personality? He had heard that people who received organs sometimes took on the hobbies and food preferences of the donor. Some people woke up craving food they’d never had before. Could the General’s new penchant for killing be like that?
If so, it didn’t come from the girl—
Maigo
—whose heart he now had in his chest.
But the heart also held traces of the creature’s DNA. He remembered how
Maigo
had changed back at the
BioLance
facility. At first, he had admired her—marveled at her. She was a living
kaiju
. But then he had seen her kill.

And feast.

She took pleasure in it.

Maigo
had changed from a human girl into a monstrous killing machine. It’s the creature, he thought. Whatever the giant they discovered was
,
the world was better off with it dead. For every
Gamera
protecting the planet, there was a
Ghidorah
,
Megalon
or
Gigan
to destroy all things.

Is that what
Maigo
became?

Is that what Gordon is becoming?

The rest of the fiftieth floor seemed to be empty. Large spaces lining the glassed-in hallway they walked through were filled with endless rows of cubicles, but not a single person. Endo looked at his watch. 7:15.

Apparently, Stanton had stayed late and the receptionist along with him. Because an alarm had yet to be sounded and no more guards encountered, Endo assumed the now dead guards were a skeleton crew nightshift. Their bodies, and the receptionist’s, might not be found until the next morning. If they could find the security suite, deleting the footage of the killing should be easy.

But did Gordon know all of this before he went on a killing spree, or was it just dumb luck? In either case, there was a chance they could walk away without being implicated in the murders. No, that’s not true, Endo thought. The elevator camera would show them getting off on the 50
^th
floor and that footage would go to the building’s security feed, not
Zoomb’s
.

“Jenny, is that you?” the man’s voice snapped Endo back to the here and now.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Paul,” Gordon replied, pushing through the unlocked wooden door. They entered the large, but sparsely decorated office together, but Endo hung back and put on a confused and fearful expression. The far wall of the office was all glass and looked out over Boston and the harbor beyond.

Paul Stanton looked confused—his forehead furrowed deeply, forming wrinkles nearly to the top of his gleaming bald head. He held an open bottle of wine, which now hovered over two glasses. His coat was off and his tie was on the solid wood desk, next to the glasses.

Jenny, it seemed, was a little more than a receptionist. And since Stanton was married and had three children, this knowledge could have gotten them anything they wanted to know. But Endo didn’t think that’s how things were going to work out.

“Gordon?” Stanton said, sounding as confused as he should be. “What are you doing here?” His eyes locked on the gun. “Where’s Jenny?”

“Dead,” Gordon says.

Endo had never once been shocked by the General’s usually blunt way of speaking to people, but this bold admission made him stumble. Gordon didn’t notice.
“
Helluva
view.
Endo, get the blinds.”

Endo didn’t see any blinds, but found a light switch by the window that tinted the whole window black.

Stanton picked up the phone and hammered his finger down on a single button.

“Your security team is dead, too,” Gordon said, slowly walking toward Stanton.

The CEO of
Zoomb
hung up the phone and then started redialing.
No doubt 911.
But Gordon raised the pistol and fired. It was an expert shot, far above the skill level the General normally exhibited at the range. It wasn’t just his speed and strength that were changing, it was everything. The bullet struck the phone and tore it to pieces.

Stanton shouted in surprise and jumped back. “What do you want?”

“Everything you have about the creature.”

“B—but why?”
Stanton asked. “Why now?”

“I gave it to you, but it belongs to me. It always has. And now I want to know everything about it. Where is it? What is it? Where is it from?”

“B—but we haven’t learned much,” Stanton said. “It’s unlike anything else on Earth. Our best people can’t make any sense of it.”

“Lies,” Gordon said, raising the pistol toward Stanton’s head.

The man screamed and fell back, cowering with his hands over his face, like it would protect him from a .50-caliber round.

There’s no way he is
lying
, Endo thought. With Jenny and the security team dead, his only hope of surviving is telling the truth. He must realize that.

“We’ve only determined two things with certainty!” Stanton shouted.

“Go on,” Gordon said, keeping the pistol leveled at the man’s head.