Nemesis leans over the creature, and with surprising gentleness and accuracy, places one of her colossal claws on the Tsuchi’s underside. The pinned spider flails, its tail stabbing at the claw but ricocheting away. While the Tsuchi goes ballistic, Nemesis reaches down with her free hand and with a quick flick of her finger, she severs the tail, effectively castrating the thing.
The Tsuchi’s legs go rigid with shock for a moment, but then it starts twitching again. Nemesis reaches down, and one by one, she flicks off the spider’s eight legs, which continue to twitch, despite being separated from the body.
My stomach sours. As much as the Tsuchi hurt Nemesis, and needs to be destroyed, this kind of torture is new for Nemesis. She generally dispatches her foes with brutal efficiency, preferring to silence the cries for vengeance as quickly as possible. This behavior is...sadistic.
Whatever fondness I have for the monster fades away. Everything good about her is now living on the other side of the country, as a teenage girl named Maigo. This Nemesis is, I think, closer to her pure, goddess of vengeance self. We’re getting a taste of old-school Nemesis now, seeing her the way our ancestors might have, the way some alien race designed her to be.
Lacking any appendages, the Tsuchi is now motionless. Its mandibles open and close slowly, but the creature isn’t going anywhere...unless it regenerates like Nemesis. But the giant Kaiju has no intention of allowing the Tsuchi to live.
“Further away!” I shout, as Nemesis brings both hands up and links them together.
The helicopter’s engine whines as we’re lifted up and further away.
The first explosion to rock the area is created by Nemesis’s fists slamming down atop the Tsuchi. The legless spider is instantly pulverized, along with a hundred feet of cliff face. The second explosion happens when Nemesis lifts her fists, exposing the Tsuchi’s ruptured membranes to the air.
While a normal explosion of this kind is a horrible thing, from the force and from the nearly nuclear temperatures generated by the blast—the most powerful non-nuclear explosion known to man—this one is compounded by the fact that it originates from within a crumbled cliff. Much of the stone is pulverized to dust by the blast, but just as much is tossed into the air, some of it baseball sized, some of it the size of a car.
Lucky for us, gravity tugs those large boulders down fast. Unlucky for us, those baseball-sized stones beat the tar out of our helicopter. Woodstock pulls some impressive maneuvers in an attempt to avoid the wave of debris, but before my stomach stops flip-flopping from whatever it is he did, I hear emergency alarms.
“Buckle up!” Woodstock shouts. “We’re going down!”
While Collins calls in a mayday over Devine, I look out the window. Below is the bold blue ocean. Straight ahead are Nemesis’s eyes, watching us drop past her. A year ago, still influenced by Maigo’s connection to me, the Kaiju might have reached out and caught us. Now the brute just watches us fall. And then, as we pass by, she turns and steps into the ocean, leaving us to our fate and leaving the two remaining Tsuchi to do whatever it is they’re going to do.
For a moment, I think Woodstock is going to pull us out of the fall. I hear the rotor spin faster for a moment, and my ass is squeezed into the seat. But then a jarring impact shakes us from below, and the setting sun is blotted out by the Pacific Ocean, which in this part of the world is thousands of feet deep.
22
Nemesis stands before me, blazing orange eyes staring down, dwarfing me. Judging me. And finding me wanting. I turn to run, but it’s useless. Not only can she outpace me, the way I might outpace an ant, but I’m on a rooftop, and this time without a wing suit or a parachute to carry me away. So I turn to face her.
Die with a little dignity, Jon.
The wet sluicing of shredding flesh fills the air, accompanied by a pungent smell—fish and blood. Nemesis arches her back, flexing her chest outward. The back skin stretches and splits. The process repeats all over her body. The greatest molting on Earth.
She tears at the stuff, leveling apartment buildings with each discarded, airplane-sized hunk of thick skin. Beneath it, a glorious white form emerges, in some ways more hideous, more defined, almost skeletal in appearance. The transformation completes as two massive wings, incapable of flight, unfurl and put the city behind her in shadow.
Where am I? I wonder. The city is both familiar, but not.
The rising sun warms my back, casting a long shadow on the metal rooftop. The light is caught by millions of glittering diamonds—what we call Nemesis’s feathers—which are highly reflective sheets capable of focusing the sun’s light into an intensely powerful energy beam. But just once, so it’s reserved for the worst of the worst.
In this case, for me.
But what did I do?
What crime have I committed?
As the wings curl, flecks of light dance around the rooftop, racing toward the center and merging with a growing spotlight centered on me. I can already feel the heat. When it happens, the intensity will be so fast and focused that I’ll be vaporized, along with everything behind me.
Nemesis roars in victory, the focus nearly attained.