“Copy that,” I say. Woodstock has heard them, too. Our descent stops short of the street and the fleeing car, which turns a sharp left and peels away, quickly accelerating like a miniature Millennium Falcon.
“You got something spiffy in mind?” Woodstock asks. “Cause now’s the time.”
“Ever set off a cherry bomb under a bucket?”
“A cherry bomb under a—wait, what in all shit are you…?”
I don’t hear the rest of his protest. I’m focused on Scrion. Every loping leap forward not only brings the Kaiju closer to us, but it also exposes the giant’s underside and the three volatile orange membranes. I normally wouldn’t consider such a move, but seeing as how the membranes are much smaller than Nemesis’s, the surrounding area has already been obliterated and all the force will be transmitted straight down into the ground, I don’t see the harm.
Scrion hits the ground on the downside of a leap forward, bringing its bulky mass to within fifty feet. Two more of those strides, and it will have us.
It’s only going to get one more.
Scrion’s muscles bulge beneath its mat of rubber-like flesh, and the body comes up again. At the first sign of orange light, I pull the trigger.
11
Pitiful, he thought, observing how predictable his enemy was. Since the events in Boston, Fusion Center-P had become one of the most prominent divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, with access to all levels of government and military. And yet, their headquarters remained entirely undefended. They believed the threats they faced came in the form of giants, easily spotted from a distance.
They were wrong.
General Lance Gordon hunched down between a stand of bushes and a lush rhododendron. The space between the plants had been hollowed out. The remains of a plastic bucket and rotting popsicle sticks littered the dirt. A childhood hideout, long forgotten.
The space was barely big enough to contain Gordon’s new body. He had grown taller, standing nearly eight feet in height. His bulk had nearly doubled. Thick muscles pushed against his thick skin, which negated the damage from both bullets and impacts. In Boston, he’d survived a thirty-story fall.
But he had been wounded.
Gordon had watched from the ground as Jon Hudson offered Alexander Tilly up to Nemesis. That had been his place. His mission. Before Maigo became Nemesis, Gordon had received a heart transplant from the girl. In essence, he had Nemesis’s heart beating in his chest. While it didn’t grow to Nemesis’s size, it did change him. In addition to the physical changes, Gordon had become connected to Nemesis, feeling her desires. Her rage. Her targets. And he set out to help her. But when Hudson offered Tilly up, that connection had been broken. It left Gordon feeling directionless and confused.
He fled west and north, back to where the original Kaiju carcass had been discovered. Lost and alone, he wandered the wilderness, feeding on whatever animal crossed his path: mouse, elk, even Grizzly bears. They were all easy prey. But his sense of purpose never returned...until he felt the connection return. But not to Nemesis. To the others. To the unborn children.
The kids.
He had gone back to Alaska and found the eggs, still whole, buried in the back of the cave their mother had died in. He suspected that when Nemesis-Prime had died so long ago, the site had been buried by a landslide, and that the eggs had gone into some kind of hibernation. When he removed them from the cave and the light of day struck their shells, the young had quickly emerged.
He wasn’t really sure how it worked, but he believed the original creature they’d found in Alaska, what Zoomb now called Nemesis-Prime, was like many species of plants and animals. It only reproduced when death was near, helping to ensure the survival of the species. Under natural circumstances, the five young might have fought amongst each other until the last one remaining took up its mother’s mantle as judge, jury and executioner. But under Gordon’s direction—with his genetic duplicate of their mother’s heart, albeit human sized—all five had survived. They’d been connected to him since, but rather than him following their desires, they followed his.
And right now, that was vengeance. Against Jon Hudson. And against Nemesis for turning away from him.
His dark skin kept him concealed in the shadows, as he watched the woman in the car. She looked to be waiting for someone. A moment later, a red helicopter lifted away from the roof and headed toward his child.
His distraction.
He couldn’t see who was inside the chopper, but he had little doubt Jon Hudson would be one of them. Hudson would either die in that chopper or upon his return. Either way, he was going to die. Like all people, Hudson was frail, but his real weakness was the people he cared about.