29
“Here’s where we’re at,” I say, elbows on the situation room table, only we’re not in the situation room. To save time, I had the table brought into the command center so we could react faster if the Aeros decide to drop another kaiju on top of us. “First, there’s a big ass hole in the middle of my big ass table.” I shoot a crumpled piece of paper toward the hole. It misses and skitters to a stop beside all my other missed shots. “Second, Drakon is dead. Obviously. Joliet is at Plymouth Hospital. Hawkins...and Typhon are there with her.”
From what I’ve heard, a few weak-hearted people nearly died when Typhon showed up clutching an unconscious woman, but everyone, including Joliet, pulled through. She’s conscious and stable, but she’s struggling psychologically after experiencing being torn in half and dying. If Hawkins hadn’t dug her out of the kaiju’s corpse, she would have died.
“Scylla and Karkinos took a beating, but are still upright. Same goes for me and Collins. Nemesis is, well, Nemesis, so she’s still ready and eager to kick some ass.”
“My little pooch is good to go,” Rook says, still enthusiastic. Somehow in the ten minutes between my return and calling this meeting, he’s managed to shower, brush his hair and put on some clean clothes, including FC-P body armor. He even smells nice. And then he goes and puts a happy little cherry on top, taking a shot with his own crumpled up paper. The shot is good, and Rook gives his winning grin. “Two points.”
I lean back, away from my three pre-crumpled sheets of paper and turn to Fiona, who is seated by Rook. “And you?” She looks like she pulled an all-nighter, got hammered and forgot to have a cup of coffee.
She gives me two thumbs up and a half smile. “Tired, but good to go. Not sure I can pull that off again any time soon, but I’ll do what I can.”
“You did good,” I say, but it doesn’t really need saying. She accomplished what the rest of us couldn’t, and did that after saving Watson, Cooper and Ted Jr. from an invasion of larvae, which have all been slain—thanks to the well trained Zoomb security force. The Mountain has been sealed off, and weak points reinforced, but the leveled forest outside still crawls with the acid-spitting buggers.
The Mountain did its job, taking some structural damage on the upper levels, but it withstood the earthshaking barrage like a champ. That’s pretty much the only good news. I lean back and turn to Cooper, who is overseeing the command center staff, even as the meeting progresses. “What’s the status on Lilly and Crazy?”
Lilly called in during the battle and Woodstock took Future Betty out to pick them up. The story is that Crazy shifted the entire city of Tucson into the MirrorWorld, which didn’t greet them too kindly—but they also haven’t destroyed the city or killed its inhabitants. Not all of them, anyway. Lilly and Crazy had returned alone, forty feet above the ground. Luckily for the unconscious Crazy, a forty foot drop was nothing for Lilly, and she can carry many times his weight. Of course, with his Dread DNA, he probably would have survived the fall anyway, but I’m still proud of her for catching him. Was a time when she wasn’t the best team player. Now, she’s indispensable, and I want her back. And as much as I hate to say it, we need Crazy, too.
“ETA, three minutes,” Cooper says. “Crazy is awake. Hasn’t said much.”
“I want them here as soon as they arrive.” It’s probably a lot to ask, but Collins and I are present, and we’re still covered with tacky, black kaiju insides. But not everyone is here, and that brings us to a subject that gets my blood boiling. “Maigo is still unconscious.”
I know she’s going to be okay. She’s the strongest of us and has survived worse. I have zero doubt that she’ll open her eyes, probably sooner than later, but she’s also my kid. Maybe not my flesh and blood, but thanks to our psychological connection, we’re probably closer than any parent and child can be. Seeing her vulnerable like that... I clench my fists, and then point a finger at Freeman. “And now I need to know, what the hell did you do to our giant, kaiju killing robot?”
Freeman’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. From what I hear, he was also instrumental in saving the Watson-Cooper gang, so my interrogation leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Still, it seems likely that whatever he did might have contributed to Maigo’s current condition.
“He said you gave him a virus,” I add.
“Well, I—in a technical sense, yes.”
I roll my head around, vertebrae popping. My body language is clear: explain or prepare for a beat down. It’s hardly a threat. Without Maigo or Crazy around, the only one of us who’d stand a chance against him is Fiona, and she looks ready for a nap.
“But it’s much more than that,” Freeman says. “I gave him the ability to think.”
“He could already think,” I say, “better and more clearly than any of us.”
“He could process information,” Freeman says. “He can now think for himself.”
It takes a moment for my weary mind to make sense of what he’s telling me. “Wait, you mean you Pinocchioed him?”
Freeman’s forehead scrunches up. For a robo-man, he’s far more expressive than the rest of us. “I’m not familiar with this term. Pinocchioed.”
“You gave him life,” Collins says, with something between fear and awe in her voice.
“Oh,” Freeman says. “Yes. I did. Hyperion is now conscious. An individual, like all of us. Free to make his own choices.”
“Did you consider that this might not be the best time to give one of our most powerful weapons the right to choose whether or not he wants to fight?”
“Everyone deserves the right to choose what to do with their lives.” Freeman holds his chin up high, claiming the moral high ground.
“Look, Freeman,” I say. “You’re young. I can see that. But this isn’t a college campus. We can’t just decide what works best for us and impose that point of view on the world. You’re free to bitch about it on Twitter, but you can’t take actions without consulting the people it might affect.”
“In Freeman’s defense, I support his decision. In hindsight, of course. He did take a great risk in setting me free.” The voice comes from the speaker system. It’s Hyperion. The alien robot can access just about any computer system on Earth and has probably been listening in this whole time. “Had Maigo not been my Voice at the time, I’m not sure how I would have evolved as the virus took root.”
That’s why he calls me ‘Dad.’ His consciousness formed from a merger of the AI and Maigo. Hyperion is definitely his own self now. But his allegiances, and hopefully his moral code, seem to be aligned with Maigo’s.
“And I understand your concerns,” Hyperion says. “I’m not going to go Skynet on you. I will follow your orders. I will fight. But...I no longer require a Voice. I have my own.”
He sounds a little sad about that last bit. I’m conflicted about it. On the one hand, I’d feel better about Hyperion knowing that Maigo was still running the show. On the other hand, having Maigo ‘on the ground’ means we have another human-sized heavy hitter. If she wakes up.
“You saying so doesn’t exactly make me feel any better,” I say. “You being Pinocchioed, also means you can lie, except that no one will know, because your nose doesn’t grow.”
“He’s good.” I turn toward the voice, and find Maigo standing in the doorway. I’m thrilled to see her up and about, but she’s also not supposed to be up and about. I made that pretty clear to the doctors. She smiles at me. Knows what I’m thinking. “They tried to stop me.”
She takes a seat at the table, and I’m pretty sure she’s operating at 100%. Doesn’t look tired. Or in shock. And like Rook, she’s managed to change into fresh combat gear and pull her hair back in a tight ponytail that would impress Cooper, the Queen of tight ponytails.
“Hyperion,” she says.
“I’m here.”
“Thanks.” She looks me in the eyes. “He saved us. Had he not been conscious when I wasn’t, I’d be dead.”
“Yes!” Freeman pumps his fist
in the air.
“First.” I jab a finger at Freeman. “You’re not off the hook. No more mind-altering or mind-freeing mumbo jumbo. Our world is full of robots and AIs that we rely on. If you start giving them all consciousness, we’re going to be facing two apocalyptic events.”
To my profound relief, it’s Hyperion who says, “I agree. Other AIs would react unpredictably, possibly violently, and would prevent humanity from defending itself.”
Freeman purses his lips, but nods.
“Second,” I say, raising a finger. “I...have no second.”
At that moment, the Bell winks into existence, filling a good portion of the command center that I had cleared for this very reason. Cowboy steps to the table, takes a seat, and says, “Is bad.”
“We know that, Wild Bill,” Rook says.
“Is very bad.” Cowboy takes off his hat, which I’ve never seen him do. He runs a hand through his brown hair, and puts the hat back on. “Destroyed Earth in other dimension isn’t destroyed.”
“They fought back?” I ask.
“Briefly,” Cowboy says. “But is not what I mean. The planet is there. But it is beachhead. For weapon. But there are two, one in Arctic, one in Antarctic. I believe they are using Earth core to power...something.”
“That must be how they’re going to destroy multiple dimensions,” Watson says, doing the dad bounce with Spunky strapped to his chest.
Cowboy nods. “Is heavily defended by Aeros. Not Kaiju.”
“So we’ve got a mothership overhead, a multi-dimensional nuke on another Earth and a big ‘something’ coming this way.” I look at Cooper again. “We have eyes on that yet?”
“Satellite is still useless,” she says, and I expected as much with the big craft overhead. “But I think we can...yes. There’s a live web feed from Jetpack Comics in Rochester. Someone is still broadcasting.”
Leave it to comic book nerds to live-feed the apocalypse. “Put it up,” I say, and I immediately regret not saying, ‘On screen.’
The large flat screen displays the streaming video. I see a quaint downtown and a white church steeple. Classic New Hampshire. And beyond that, I see...something. It crashes down, destroying the church under its girth.
“What the frick is that?” Rook asks.
“I believe…” Freeman says, standing slowly. “I believe that is a foot.”
The church had to be a good 150 feet tall. If that was just the foot, this thing dwarfs Nemesis. Dwarfs Prime. The screen goes blank as a pressure wave slams into whoever was holding the camera.
“That’s a big ass mammajamma.” Lilly, whose sense of humor and timing is nearly as bad as mine, enters the room, followed by Crazy. “Are we late to the party?”
“Actually,” Cowboy says. “You are just in time. I have plan.”
30
I was never big on traditions. Thanksgiving with extended family had no appeal. When I started getting socks for Christmas, I was out. I preferred the random chaos of bachelorhood. At first, it was parties. Kegs, pot, beer pong, the basics. Then I discovered adrenaline sports, and I became friends with Hawkins. We lived large for a few years, and then, like all kids in our early twenties, we discovered real life was waiting for us to notice its inevitable arrival.
Hawkins became a park ranger, and he excelled, putting the lessons learned from his adoptive father, Howie Goodtracks, to good use. I somehow landed a job at the DHS. My penchant for action, and my ability to make people laugh, helped me get ahead. My lack of motivation or respect for authority landed me the joke job of the century, Director of the FC-P. Little did I know, the FC-P was created by none other than the Ferox, and my position as Director, was a calculated risk. They wanted someone, who like Michael Keaton’s Batman, could get a little nuts.
But now I’m older. I’ve seen and survived things that have changed me to the core. And now, I like traditions. I get why family gatherings are important. I look forward to revisiting old themes and retelling stories of times past. But there is still one tradition I hate repeating.
I call it the Walk of Doom. In years past, when the world has gone nuts, Collins and I took this walk around the hilltop neighborhood surrounding the Crow’s Nest. We’d reflect on the people we were fighting for, the destruction already done and the state of our relationship. It’s a time of bonding, and potentially a final goodbye. There’s no guarantee we’ll both survive the insane plan hatched by Cowboy and agreed to by the rest of us. So we’re taking five minutes to connect. To dream about a future together. To remember what we’re fighting for. As much as the fate of the world rests in our hands, when you cut away all the noble bullshit, we’re not fighting to save the planet, or an infinite number of alternate Earths. We’re fighting for the people we love. For our family.
Of course, remembering all this while walking down the hallway of a top secret, recently infiltrated, underground base is easier said than done. Security, maintenance and medical personnel bustle about around us, rushing from one hot zone to the next, shoring up defenses, patching wounds and preparing for the worst.
Despite the onlookers and passersby, Collins links her fingers with mine. We managed to take quick showers and dress—five minutes, in and out, no hanky panky—so her hand feels soft in mine.
“Think this will work?” she asks.
“What I think, is that we don’t have any other options.” I give her hand a squeeze. “But you know me. If I have a square peg and need to put it in a round hole, I’ll pound on it until it fits. That’s what she said.”
Collins had to know that was coming, but she laughs anyway.
“But it’s not going to be a cakewalk,” she says.
“Never is.”
“We’re going to take losses.”
It’s a very sterile way of saying, ‘Friends are going to die.’
I stop in my tracks. “Yes.”
Collins isn’t a crier. She watched E.T., Shawshank Redemption and Up without shedding a tear, while I was reduced to a blubbering mess. So when I see a glimmer of wetness in her eyes, mine respond in kind. I wrap her in my arms, holding her tight, like I’ve just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And it feels like that. What we have to do now...death feels unavoidable.
“You’re such a pansy,” she says into my ear.
“Shut-up and let me have a good cry,” I say, but I’m smiling now. If I die, I’ve been a lucky sonuvabitch for finding a woman like Collins.
And in the perfect peace of that shared moment, where it feels like nothing in the world can defeat the love shared between us, Manfred Mann’s Blinded by the Light, blares from my cellphone.
Collins chuckles and pulls back. “Perfect timing, as usual.”
“You know, for years I thought the lyrics were, ‘wrapped up like a douche.’”
She laughs again, wiping the wetness from her eyes.
I look at the phone. “It’s a video call. No ID.”
“I didn’t know that was possible,” she says.
“Down here...” I look at the walls around us, hundreds of feet beneath a mountain. “It shouldn’t be.”
I swipe my finger over the screen, accepting the call.
The face of Zach Cole fills the phone’s screen. Mephos. “Hey, Bubbah, I didn’t know you were on Chatroulette. Hope you don’t mind if I keep my clothes on.”
My witty repartee has no effect on the man, which might be because he’s not a man at all. It, I remind myself. He is an it. Not human.
“Your plan is shit,” it says.
I don’t bother questioning how it knows the details of our plan, or even if it knows them at all. If it doesn’t have the Mountain bugged, it very likely has Ferox inside the base, watching and reporting. And I haven’t bothered trying to root out the spies, digital or flesh-and-blood. Because as much as I loathe the Ferox and what they’ve done to humanity, we also need them. Mephos doesn’t know it, but I was hoping to hear from him...it.
“Not entirely shit,” I say. “There were just a few missi
ng pieces.”
This gets a grin out of it, and the comment wasn’t even meant to be funny. The smile is closer to pride, probably because Mephos realized I was waiting for it to get in touch. It’s the only reason Collins and I had time to shower and go on our little stroll. We need Mephos.
“Should I take this call to mean that we’ve passed whatever test you had for us?” I ask, stepping into a side room with Collins.
“You survived,” Mephos says. “They were merely testing your defenses. And while those are certainly lacking, the Aeros underestimated your resolve, and they were unprepared for your...friends. That they have decided to send Ashtaroth means you have their attention. It means they are distracted. There will never be a better time to strike.”
I look at it, trying to get a measure of the alien. I don’t trust it. The Ferox are the inventors of psychological manipulation. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening. The Ferox have been grooming the human race, and my team, for this very moment. We are no longer pawns in a scheme, we are allies in a war. The Ferox needs us as much as we need them.
So I fill it in, laying out every juicy detail and nuance of the three-pronged plan, which now includes what was left out before. It’s just one request, but when I make it, the creature’s broad smile says it understands that my plan is a game changer. And like all game changers in war, it is brutal, dangerous and probably criminal. It’s a good thing the Geneva Protocol doesn’t apply to invading alien races, because we’re going to break the shit out of those rules. And as much as I know our actions are necessary, I’m a little haunted by how delighted Mephos is by the idea.
We really are making the Ferox proud, I think, and I struggle to resist the urge to smash the phone against the wall.
“I have one condition,” it says.
“Of course you do.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“‘You’ as in me?” I ask. “You’re a little chubby for a stealth mission.”
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 19
