I’m caught from above and look up into Collins’s eyes. She’s got me, both strong hands gripping my arm, Hawkins behind her, holding her belt with both hands. But Collins can’t lift us both. Like me, her shoulders will give before she can haul us up. Maigo steps calmly into view, lays on her stomach and reaches out over the edge. She locks up for a moment, looking at Nemesis far below, but then she reaches out further, to Lilly. “Take my hand.”
Lilly lunges up, tugging me down, and catches Maigo’s hand. The weight falls away, granting relief. But then Maigo surprises me by taking hold of my arm and lifting both Lilly and me up onto the ramp. We all crawl back up into the X-35, its ramp already closing.
Endo, standing above the group as we huff and puff on the floor, greets me with, “Did you do it?”
“Yeah, we’re fine,” I say. “Thanks for asking.”
Endo crouches in front of me. “I know that humor is how you communicate, but right now, my sister—”
“Is alive,” I say.
He lowers his voice to something like a growl. “You have no idea what kind of people these are.”
“I imagine they’re a lot like you,” I say, and that shuts him up, not because it was the world’s most witty comeback, but perhaps one of the more accurate. “They have Woodstock, too. I don’t intend on letting them keep either of them. As bad as you think they are, we’re equally good, and I don’t mean that in a happy-go-lucky kind of way, I mean that in a kick-ass kind of way.”
“Damn straight,” Lilly says.
“Now if you can back off, there are a pair of Kaiju destroying Los Angeles.”
Endo stays locked in place, staring at me.
“Right. Yes. We put the bacteria bomb on the Tsuchi.” I pull myself off the floor and into one of the cargo seats. I look down through the floor at the action below. “It should have gone off by now.” I turn toward the cockpit. “Did the bacteria bomb explode?”
“They don’t explode,” Silhouette says. “They open, exposing the organic material to the bacteria. Then they eat their way through.”
“How long does that take?” I ask.
“For the armor? A few minutes. After that, it should be like acid on a head of lettuce.”
“A few minutes?” Sonofa... “That’s too long. What else can we do?”
“Let them fight?” Obsidian suggests.
I throw my hands in the air. “What the hell? Are you all quoting a movie or something?”
“Actually,” Lilly says, but I cut her off.
“Never mind,” I say, watching the Tsuchi topple through the city, landing at the base of Wells Fargo Tower, a fifty-four-floor building shaped like a blade, perfectly matching its sister building, the KPMG Tower. The thousands of windows normally reflecting the sky, burst, sending twinkling shards of glass down onto the Tsuchi, which is struggling to right itself atop a McDonalds. As Nemesis heads for the creature, her back to us, I look at Lilly and she nods. I hate to say it, but today, that cat-lady and I are simpatico.
I look at Maigo, her scowl deep and concerning. As much as I’d like to talk this out with her, there are people dying down there, and it’s my job to put a stop to it. The Nemesis below us is not Maigo anymore. She’s—it’s—a monster, no different from the Tsuchi. I stand, and grunt from the effort, my battered body resisting every motion.
Collins puts her hand on my arm. “You’re in no condition.”
“I’ll go,” Endo says, pulling out a wingsuit. But before he can start dressing, Obsidian steps into the cargo hold, already dressed to jump and with the third bacteria bomb strapped to him. The whole point of two people going was so that if one died, the other could finish the job. The bomb—a generous word for a device that simply opens—on his stomach ends the conversation. The back hatch opens again.
Obsidian smiles at Lilly and gives her a wink. “Just you and me, pretty kitty.”
She hisses at him, while Hawkins sneaks up behind the big man and puts a knife to his throat. “If you come back without her...”
Lilly smiles up at Hawkins, puts her hands over her heart and silently says, “Aww.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the big man says, not at all intimidated. He puts his fingers on the blade and pushes it away from his throat. Then he steps to the edge of the ramp. He looks back with a slick grin, “Watch yourself, Ranger. We know all about your bear-killing days, your girlfriend back East, your old Indian step-dad, and—”
The man’s threat is cut short when Lilly takes hold of the man and throws him out the back. She gives a wave and jumps out after him.