Project Maigo(89)

She took several, rapid, deep breaths, saturating her lungs with oxygen. The effort cleared the cobwebs some, but did nothing for the pain. She took the stairs quickly, taking deep breaths the whole way. By the time she reached the second landing, she was sweating and out of breath, but the effort got her blood flowing and fought against her desire to simply pass out.

A green metal door blocked her path to the roof. She tried the handle and found it locked, as expected. With a sigh, she placed the launcher down on the concrete landing and drew her .50 caliber handgun, happy that she’d reloaded the weapon after escaping the secret Zoomb laboratory.

This is going to hurt, she thought, wishing she could cover her ears. With just a moment’s hesitation, she pulled the trigger once. The cacophonous report made her shout, and clutch her free hand to her ear, but the powerful round did its job, destroying the door’s lock.

She took the now-loose handle, shook it about and pulled. The door ground open, unleashing a warm smoky haze. Collins coughed and felt her nausea return, but she pushed past it, picking up the launcher and heading into the battle-lit night.

She staggered onto the roof, heading toward the sound of battle. When she reached the charred edge, she looked out into hell. A massive swath of the city had been reduced to charcoal. Fires burned around the perimeter. Judging by the amount of smoke rising from below, she believed her building was burning, too.

Crouching near the building’s edge, she placed the launcher on the stone-covered roof and dialed Alessi on her phone. “You’re already there?” Alessi asked, sounding surprised.

“Elevator worked,” Collins said. “Please tell me you’re ready.”

“Just point the launcher toward Scylla. I’ll use the guidance system to target her and fire the rocket, but...it’s going to get hot for you.”

“I understand how rockets work,” Collins said. “Let’s just get this done.”

She put the phone on speaker mode and dropped it in her pocket. Then she hoisted the launcher onto her shoulder and stepped closer to the edge. Nemesis stood a mile away, facing Collins. Karkinos and stoic Typhon stood in front of Collins, their backs to her, oblivious to her tiny presense. They appeared to be sizing each other up, slowly moving in broad destructive circles like wrestlers in a ring.

She found Scylla still lying in the reflecting pool, but starting to stir. They didn’t have long. She pointed the launcher toward Scylla and shouted, “Good to go!”

“Hold on,” came Alessi’s muffled voice. “Once this thing launches, you can move, okay?”

“Just fire it!” Collins shouted. Her head was spinning, her arms shaking.

“Target locked,” Alessi said. “Firing in three, two, one—”

The rocket inside the canister ignited, blowing the back off. She could feel the heat singe her shoulder, but she held the launcher in place. Then the rocket was free, kicking back a wave of heat. Collins shouted in pain, dropped the launcher and fell to the roof, where she remained, unmoving, as the rocket-propelled neural implant cut a path over the ruins of downtown Washington, D.C.





46



Mark Hawkins shouted with surprise as his feet left the ground. He was lifted up by an arm far stronger than the average human’s. But this surprise was a happy one, because the fist wrapped around the back of his armor belonged to Lilly, not Gordon.

Seeing his prey escaping, Gordon lunged, but he was too late. Lilly’s express elevator carried Hawkins thirty feet up, and then across, slipping through entwined branches, moving from tree to tree, faster than Gordon could run on the ground.

When Lilly finally stopped moving, she deposited him on a high branch and asked, “Okay?”

“Fine,” he replied. “Thanks.”

She gave a feline smile and disappeared in a blur of black fur.

After collecting himself, Hawkins nocked an arrow and searched for Gordon, feeling like Robin Hood as he looked over his bow’s fiber-optic sight, standing on a branch thirty feet above the ground. He was concealed by the leaf-laden branches, but the foliage also hindered his view. He mumbled curses while he moved further out on the branch, which bent from his weight.

The view ahead cleared and he locked his legs around the branch to stay upright and took aim again. With the drawstring pulled taut, he whistled a bird call.

He could hear Gordon chasing Lilly below, and the giant monsters in the distance, but amid all that, the sound of a bird call reply came loud and clear. Lilly was on her way. She passed by below. A blur in the night. Superhuman.

Gordon moved quickly too, but despite his dark coloration, he stood out. It took just a half second for Hawkins to adjust his aim and let go of the bowstring. The arrow whistled through the air, heading downward, puncturing leaves and then finding its target. The projectile slipped through the thick flesh of Gordon’s right shoulder, burying itself six inches deep.