I answer the phone. “What’s happening?”
As I listen to the voice on the other end, my face falls flat. Collins steps closer, a look of concern on her face. Hawkins, Joliet, Goodtracks and Lilly join her, all waiting to hear what I’m being told.
“I need an address,” I say to Hawkins. When he hesitates, I clarify. “For a helicopter pick-up.”
He gives me an address, and I relay it to Cooper before hanging up.
“Is it Nemesis?” Collins asks.
“Where?” Hawkins asks. He looks ready for action, and I wonder what his life has been like and how Lilly came to be a part of it. We’ll have to catch up on all that later. Right now, we have a helicopter to catch—and that bottle of calamine lotion.
I turn north and strike out, answering, “Hong Kong.”
3
Katsu Endo, formerly of the Japanese Self-Defense Force, had done things he wasn’t proud of to survive. First, was the shooting of Master Sergeant Lenny Wilson. But the act had saved his life and ingratiated him with General Lance Gordon. But his allegiance was never to Gordon. It was to the dead monster they had found buried in the wilds of Alaska. He’d spent his childhood admiring Japanese Kaiju, or ‘strange beasts,’ the way other kids admired superheroes. So, where the monster’s corpse went, his allegiance followed. And right now, his loyalty belonged to Zoomb, an Internet search engine turned technology behemoth.
At first, his duties involved protecting Zoomb’s CEO, Paul Stanton, but over the past year, fear of reprisal from Gordon had faded. Endo’s unique skill set, combining high intelligence, lethal fighting skills and special ops training, made him the ideal candidate for the R&D unit’s ‘field research team.’ In less politically correct terms, they were a corporate-espionage strike team, capable of stealing the competition’s technology and prototypes, ferreting out leaks or simply handling competition the old fashioned way—with bribery, extortion and threats of violence. In the corporate world, motivated primarily by money, these techniques worked better than actually killing people, which pleased Endo, because he was not fond of taking lives. He was driven but not coldhearted.
Thankfully, his passion and the goals of Zoomb’s R&D department were aligned. There was no higher priority for them than the original monster, Nemesis-Prime. They wanted to understand the creature. Where it came from. What motivated it. They wanted to extract technologies. They not only saw massive profit potential, but a way to change the entire world.
They had the original Kaiju creature’s carcass hidden away, but its petrified form kept most of its secrets well guarded. Although they had managed to extract a viable sample of the creature’s DNA, it had been lost with the destruction of the laboratory that gave birth to the new Nemesis. They had nearly succeeded in advancing medicine to a point where lives could be saved and extended, but instead they had succeeded only in creating a new monster—a successor to the original. But the monster’s creation also provided opportunity. For science. For medicine. And for war.
Zoomb didn’t just want to study the new beast, they wanted to control it.
So when reports of the attack on Hong Kong came in, Endo and his team were on board a Cessna Citation X—the world’s fastest private jet, clocking in at 717 miles per hour—cruising across the Pacific, covering a mile every six seconds.
Endo crossed his legs, settled back into the plush leather seat and glanced out the window at the blue sky and bluer ocean below. Somewhere down there was a 300-foot tall monster capable of destroying entire cities. Perhaps the world. A smile came to his face.
“Sir,” a woman said.
He turned to Maggie Alessi, his second in command. Like him, she was dressed in black slacks and a black jacket. The attire served to conceal their weapons, but also made them look like government officials. FBI, CIA, even the DHS. Whatever they needed to be. Zoomb had the resources to create any ID they needed, and the R&D department had a higher budget than most government agencies.
“What is it?” he asked.
“We just got confirmation. The FC-P is in the air.”
“Hudson?” he asked.
“And Collins.”
He nodded. He had nothing against Jon Hudson. In fact, he admired the man for standing unshaken before Nemesis and offering Maigo’s father, Alexander Tilly, to the monster as a sacrificial lamb. The man was guilty of murder, but at the time had not yet been convicted. Hudson had been scrutinized for the act at first, but no one could deny that he’d saved what remained of Boston, and countless more lives. When evidence proving that Tilly had murdered his wife and daughter emerged, the matter was dropped. Despite Endo’s admiration for Hudson, he knew the feeling was not mutual. Hudson would arrest him just as soon as he had evidence linking Endo to one of the many crimes Gordon had had him commit.