Silhouette pushes another button behind him, and a second panel opens. This contains two BlackGuard uniforms, folded in neat stacks. He then heads for the cockpit, joined by Obsidian. “You have two minutes. I hope you can change fast.”
Collins and I lose the togas, and start getting dressed. While I rarely miss the opportunity to steal a look at Collins dressing, I barely notice now. The three bacteria bombs sitting beside our clothes hold my attention, not because I fear one of them might go off and eat us all, but because they have the potential to kill Nemesis. While I can logically understand why that needs to happen, I’m not sure how Maigo is going to feel about it, and if she has a problem, what she’ll do about it.
Eleven men...
25
When people back home asked Pixie Brearley where she lived in Los Angeles, she always replied, “On Sunset,” and watched as people were either impressed or afraid. The reaction depended on what they knew about Hollywood’s infamous Sunset Strip. It was a haven for actors looking for cheap rent at the heart of tinsel town. It was also populated by a large number of seedy elements, from drug dealers to porn actors to general freaks of nature that would make her conservative parents pass out. But it was where a number of stars got their start.
It also was a good eighteen miles away; a thirty minute drive without traffic, and there was always traffic. Brearley silenced her alarm clock and stared at the ceiling. She had two auditions today, one for a grocery store commercial she would probably get, and one for a sitcom that she wouldn’t. She had a face that got her into auditions, but there was something—her voice, delivery, mannerisms, who knew?—that kept her from landing the big roles. This ever-present dichotomy depressed her. She was always on the cusp of having a career. A real career.
She knew she shouldn’t complain. She got enough work to pay the bills. But it really just felt like a tease. Like if the Church had asked Michelangelo to do a comic strip instead of the Sistine Chapel. Sure, she might not be on the same level as a Michelangelo, but she had the potential. Or, at least, she believed she did. “Just like every other asshole in this town,” she said to herself, sitting up in bed.
It was 6:00 am. The sun was rising, but her apartment building was still cast in the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains rising up behind Montrose. The small town, technically a part of the much larger Glendale, was on the fringe of Los Angeles, but it had a small-town feel. It let her be close enough to work, without having to deal with the stifling inner-city life other wannabe actors seemed to enjoy.
Maybe that’s my problem, she thought, I need more angst.
She stood and stretched, thinking she needed to get back to taking Yoga, but it was such a cliché LA thing to do, it drove her nuts. She wanted all the glory Los Angeles had to offer, without losing her Maine sensibilities.
That’s probably the real issue. I’m not ditsy enough.
She turned to the chest-high bedroom window that stretched from one end of the room to the other and looked at the view. Or rather, the lack of view. Despite living quite close to the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, the grayish-brown smog stuck in the valley completely erased the surrounding landscape. Out the windows at the front of her apartment, she had an equally non-existent, stunning view of downtown Los Angeles. But she really only saw the mountains and the city from her apartment on the few days a year it actually rained. While the rest of Los Angeles went ballistic over a quarter inch of rain, she just enjoyed the views and the ability to see more than a hundred feet. Right now, the towering mountains were vague silhouettes, backlit by the rising sun.
Something about the light held her interest. While she rubbed the crust from her eyes, she watched the sunlight shift about through the haze, like when someone walks in front of a light, breaking it up with a mobile shadow. But on a grand scale. That shadow loomed larger. Menacing. Her thoughts immediately shifted to the Kaiju known as Nemesis. She had been safe in Los Angeles during both of the creature’s prior appearances, and the West Coast had been totally unaffected by the monster, or by the five others that had smashed a path of destruction around the world. Los Angeles had earthquakes, violent wind storms, brush fires and lung-burning smog, but not Kaiju. Despite that, she paid special attention to the monster, because its origins in Maine were only an hour away from her childhood home in Mechanic Falls.
The shadowy shape warbled through the view, almost vibrating, and then, it quickly shrank away to nothing. She rubbed her eyes, fixed on the shadowy mountain, but she could see nothing other than the blank slate of gray light.