“You say that like Atlantis is the strangest of all those revelations,” Collins says. “And I’m not sure why, but I believe him, too. Not that it excuses the way they have been preparing for the Aeros. And you—” She burrows into my skull with her eyes. “—you will not be collaborating with these people.”
As tempting as it is, I know she’s right. Becoming monsters to fight monsters has never been our style...if you ignore the fact that Lilly is a cat woman, Maigo has Kaiju strength and I once controlled a Kaiju by taking over its mind. Ignoring all that, our humanity is still intact. “Can we agree that milking them for information is acceptable? We still have no real idea what we’d be up against, should said invasion ever take place. For all we know, it might not happen for another hundred years. If the Aeros and Ferox have been duking it out for thousands of years, I doubt they operate on the same time scale as us. That they’re not here yet, ten years later, means it’s probably not a hop, skip and a jump through a wormhole or something.”
“Milk away, but don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” Collins says.
“That was one of the worst mixed metaphors I’ve ever heard,” Endo says.
Collins, Maigo and I all crane our heads toward him at once.
I shake my head. “Seriously, why does every asshole in the world think they can pal around with us?”
Endo stands grinning. “You’re easy targets.”
Collins and I are both surprised when Maigo lunges forward, picks Endo up by his chest armor and slams him against the elevator wall. “Not as easy as you.” The tone of her voice is dark and brooding. The creatures we saw, and the memories they conjured, must have deeply affected her.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Easy now. Maigo...”
“I won’t let them hurt you,” she says to me. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The sentiment seems overly simple, but is familiar. It’s basically how Nemesis acted a year ago, when Maigo was still part of the monster. In response to my helping the creature exact revenge on Maigo’s murderous father, Maigo bonded to me. While our relationship has become a more complex father-daughter affair, today’s events have returned her protective nature to the surface.
Endo bows his head. “Apologies, Maigo. I meant no harm. It wounds me to know that I have upset you. I will respect your...parents from now on.”
While his apology sounds sincere, he definitely had to force the word ‘parents,’ and I can’t blame him. As much as he would like to have a relationship with the girl who was once Nemesis, she sees us, even though we’re not married—yet—as adoptive parents.
The elevator pings, and the doors slide open. Guns are thrust in our faces. We nearly spring into action, but Lilly stumbles into the elevator, throwing up her hands, a sharp-toothed smile on her face. “My peeps!”
Guns are lowered. Hawkins, looking like he went a few rounds with a Ferox, steps into the elevator. He’s followed by Alessi and Woodstock.
“Going the hell up,” Woodstock says.
“I heard Silhouette caught up with you?” I ask Hawkins.
“A few minutes before he caught up with the Devil,” he replies, dead serious.
The mood in the elevator is heavy and serious, but then Lilly does an exaggerated Hawkins impression, “‘A few minutes before he caught up with the Devil.’” She starts laughing, breaking the tension, and we all join in. Even Maigo, who finally lets go of Endo.
The elevator pings.
The doors open.
Our laughter stops.
The elevator has risen up into an empty space that used to be hidden by a small building, which is now just rubble around us. And beyond the rubble...is an unimaginable field of black death. The charring covering everything, from the steaming tarmac, to the smoldering buildings, to the hundreds of small, smoking heaps that I think are bodies, tells me that the Tsuchi’s explosive membrane was ruptured. But without Nemesis lying on top of it, forcing the Tsuchi to absorb the brunt of the explosion, the Kaiju here was probably launched into the sky like a tossed coin.
I step out of the elevator and look to the northeast, where Cole said the Tsuchi was headed. My flipped coin theory appears validated by the crumbling side of Bald Mountain, where the flipped Tsuchi, weighing fifty thousand tons, give or take ten thousand, must have landed on its back. A cloud of dust streaking into the distance reveals its course, just like Cole said, to the northeast.
So what’s to the northeast?
I run my thoughts over a mental map of the country. There is literally almost nothing between here and the Nevada border. A few roads here and there. Minimal people to worry about. It’s mostly arid, flat desert cut through by rugged mountainous terrain. My imaginary map continues northeast, crossing the border of Utah, following an imaginary path right to Salt Lake City, its surrounding suburbs and its millions of residents. If I’m right, the Tsuchi is still after food, but also moving away from Nemesis, who is also headed northeast in pursuit of it.