She shrugs. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You know at least one of these walls is one-way glass, right? We’re being watched.”
She looks at our refection. “Everything about this place is designed to make us uncomfortable. To keep us off balance. I’m saying, let’s find some balance.”
Her eyes lock mine in place. The intensity of her gaze would be enough to make most men look away. I just get lost in them. “Fine. Yes. I’m working on it.”
“Nothing big, I hope,” she says. “No song and dance, or in front of a crowd or a ring in a muffin.”
I hold my breath. While I haven’t decided anything yet, I was feeling some pressure, like a lot of guys do, I suppose, to come up with something grand as a demonstration of my love. I might not put a video of it on Facebook, making a spectacle of our relationship, but I did think something...grand...was expected these days.
“Just...ask. Okay? When you’re ready.”
I feel a weight I didn’t know was there fall away. First because she’s removed all the social pressure, which is liberating, and second because she’s basically indicated what her answer will be. She wants me to ask. She’s going to say yes. My eyes widen just a touch.
Collins puts her hand on my chest and quickly says, “But not now.”
“Right,” I say, waving my hand in the air, overdoing my denial. “Pssh, I wasn’t... Totally. I—”
“Okay,” a man’s voice booms from some unseen speaker. “I get it. You’re unfazed by your surroundings. Congratulations.”
The man sounds annoyed and maybe a little revolted by our romantic talk.
“Now,” the man says, “turn around and look at the mess you’ve made.”
Collins and I both turn around. The mirrored wall has gone clear, revealing a city in ruins. It’s night, but the crumbling city is lit by a number of fires. I step toward the wall of glass, looking down. The destruction ends a block away, but stretches from one end of the city to another. Amid all the chaos, I see people.
Bodies.
They litter the street. But not one of them is whole. I’ve seen this before. When Nemesis first escaped Maine. She went on a rampage, but not for the joy of destruction. She was feasting, on people, to fuel her rapid growth. But this wasn’t Nemesis, and we’re not in Maine. This was a Tsuchi. We’re looking at what remains of Lompoc, California.
“It ate them,” I say. “It’s growing.”
“Yes,” the man says. “They are.”
23
“Where are they?” I ask, watching the emergency vehicles’ futile attempts to put out fires and rescue the dying. We should be down there, coordinating a response. This is our job, and this ass... I take a deep breath and steady myself. Losing my cool will do no one any good.
“We don’t know,” the man behind the mirror replies.
“How could you not know?” Collins asks, sounding just as close to losing her patience as me.
“In case you have failed to notice, the sun has fallen.”
I turn to the mirrored wall behind me and stab out a finger. “In case you failed to notice the past thirty years, there is now such a thing as infrared.”
The man’s response is calm, lacking any trace of defensiveness. “The Tsuchi’s body heat is concealed within its armor. A normal Tsuchi can hide from thermal imaging when it is retracted within its shell. But these new...Kaiju-Tsuchi are armored, top to bottom, making them all but invisible to FLIR or any other thermal imaging. And before you ask, yes, that includes our digitally-enhanced vision system.”
“That’s a lazy name,” I say. “Don’t you think?”
Collins backhands my shoulder.
“What? It doesn’t even spell anything. Devs? ‘Hand me my Devs.’ ‘Looking through these Devs is like—’”
“Enough!” the man shouts, showing that he can, at least, be irritated. “How you people are still alive is a mystery to me. You respond to chaos with more chaos. You operate out of an old brick building and a cabin in the woods.”
Collins and I both tense, but if the man behind the glass notices, he doesn’t say anything. He knows about the cabin.
“Tell me, what is your plan now, Jon Hudson? If I were to set you free, what would you do?”