Brice saw what was about to happen, and tried shouting out, but nothing could stop the big man’s charge. Weighing more than three hundred pounds, the prodigious Wood struck the window at the far end, moving at an impressive clip for his size. Momentum carried all of his girth into the pane, which didn’t shatter. Instead, the whole window popped free and fell away.
Brice ran to the end of the hall, listening to Wood’s scream fade with distance, and then, all at once, it was cut silent with a loud smack. Moving fast, Brice nearly fell out of the window himself, but he caught the frame and clung to it, looking down. Wood’s body, fifteen stories below, appeared wider than before, a pool of dark red slowly seeping out. But the gore wasn’t what held his attention, it was the man’s bulging head. With a crack audible from fifteen floors up, Wood’s head split open and burst. But it wasn’t a brain that emerged. It was a scrabbling, still growing Tsuchi. The creature, smaller than the one that birthed it, perhaps because it had been implanted in the man’s head, rather than his soft gut, stumbled to the side, found its footing and then scrambled inside the open cargo door that led inside Building-K, the 200,000-square-foot morgue.
Working the phone, Brice quickly triggered the bay door to close, and then he locked down the rest of the massive building. Next he redirected security, and unlocked his own floor. The Tsuchi had to be caught or destroyed at all costs. He took consolation in the fact that the BlackGuard were scheduled to return soon, and that the Tsuchi required living hosts to multiply. Looking down at the massive morgue, Brice shook his head and thought, thank God for that.
9
Hawkins and I survived the blast beneath the water, but nearly drowned as a result. It took some last-second teamwork to escape the torrent of water pouring over us—water that had gotten hot enough to burn—but we survived. And from what I saw, we were the only survivors inside a square mile. The mysterious DARPA hit squad had done their job. But did they do it well enough?
So far, it seems that way. Hawkins found no traces of the things, and there hadn’t been any more reported sightings. We almost got cooked, but we also got lucky.
Not that you’d be able to tell by talking to Hawkins. While I’m feeling happy to be alive and not the proud father of three baby-killing machines, he’s upset that the DARPA guys got away. Stopping the BFSs, or Tsuchis, was our primary goal, but Hawkins wanted more. He wanted a lead. But it seems that our only lead is cracked, waterlogged and lacking in clues.
“So you’re telling me they’re useless?” Hawkins says, pacing in front of the long window back at the Crow’s Nest. The view looks out on Beverly-Salem Harbor, which is now under repair. Two years ago, Nemesis, on her way to Boston, made a pit stop in the harbor, decimating the area with a fiery detonation matching the power of the cluster bombs dropped on the Tillamook State Forest. A year later, Nemesis returned, this time with Maigo’s consciousness at the forefront, battling a smaller Kaiju named Scrion, and protecting me. The view outside the window now is blessedly clear and calm.
Can’t say the same for the view on the inside. Hawkins’s pacing is making everyone nervous. The office space is clean, each of our desks separated and the neatness contained, evidence of Cooper’s continued influence. The walls are covered in maps, with pins showing the locations of active FC-P cases, closed cases and general reports of weirdness. There is a global map specifically for Kaiju threats. It hasn’t been used in a year. There are pins showing the locations of Nemesis sightings, as well as the five Kaiju born from Nemesis Prime, all now dead, along with Nemesis. The last pin was placed in Washington D.C. A large red question mark was drawn next to it, by Maigo. She, like me, would like to know where Nemesis’s body was taken.
Two days after the battle that leveled much of the capital, also under reconstruction, Nemesis’s body simply vanished in the night. I haven’t been able to find out who took it, how they managed to move her, and where she was taken. Monster or not, Maigo came from the creature, and she did save Washington, probably the world and on a more personal note—me.
“I can’t turn them on, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Watson says. His chubby face is flushed. He’s been intimidated by Hawkins since they first met. Hawkins is a big guy with a deep voice. Where I’m casual and chummy, he’s rugged and serious. But this is the first time Watson has seen him angry. He turns his attention away from Hawkins and back to the futuristic goggles left behind by the man known as Specter, who for some reason spared our lives. “Nobody has seen anything like this. Best guess, they’re some kind of vision-enhancing goggles. Like night vision, but something else. There’s all sorts of sensors in here, but I can’t tell what they’re for. Batteries. A transmitter.”
That perks up my ears. I take my crossed legs down from my desktop and sit up. “Transmitter?”
“Yeah,” Watson says, happy to have me in the conversation. He’s got the goggles opened up on his desk, its insides laid bare.