“What did the hole look like?”
She blinks hard twice. “Like...a peapod...on the back of her neck. They just wanted a hug. Just a little hug. I think she’s lonely.” Lilly puts her hand on Maigo’s knee. “She misses you, Maig. Think she wants you back...or whoever is convenient, I guess...whoever gets too close. Almost got me, but I don’t swing that way.” She laughs again. “Sorry, Nems, I don’t like you that way.”
I look at Maigo, whose face shows an inner conflict. “Not a chance.”
“But if it could save people, we have to—”
“Not going to happen.”
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” Maigo argues. “Save people?”
“I’m not going to sacrifice you,” I say. “I’m not going to give you back. You don’t deserve—”
“It’s not up to you,” she says. “Nemesis is part of me. She’s in my head. And I’m still part of her. I hate it. It sucks. But I might be able to steer her. Guide her. Without me, she’s just a monster. I can give her a conscience again.”
We stare at each other for a moment. Then I stand and sit back down, calmly buckling myself in. I turn to Collins. “Get in touch with Watson and Cooper. I want them coordinating a staggered evacuation, starting with everyone southwest of Salt Lake. Send them east. Then work their way up, moving people in every direction except for southwest.”
“Endo,” I say. “How long to get to Maine without killing us?”
“An hour,” he says.
“Then we’ll be back in time to see Salt Lake City laid to waste.”
I ignore the grumbling voices all around me. I understand what Maigo is suggesting. I can see how it would work. And aside from our close bond, I’m not sure how I can really argue against it, or take it away from her. But I’ll be damned if I let her go without reminding her of what she’s signing up for.
“Take us home.”
38
“Why are we here?” Maigo stands with her arms crossed, but she’s no longer shrunken in on herself, hiding behind her bangs. She’s got the long black hair tied back in a tight ponytail. This might be the first time I’ve really seen her whole face at once. Not that I can see her very well. It’s dark and my flashlight sucks. There are GOD goggles in the X-35, but I don’t want them knowing where we are, or recording this conversation.
“For perspective,” I say, stepping through the doorway into the morgue beneath the ruined laboratory in Maine. “This is where it started. Where you started.”
“And you wanted me to remember what it’s like to kill people?” She’s on the defense, putting up walls like a typical teenager, which is really what I want for her. “I haven’t forgotten. How could I?”
“No, I—”
“It would be different. I’m stronger. My will is stronger. I could control her.”
The last sentence is spoken with a trace of doubt. While both of us are certain that Maigo’s rejoining Nemesis would restore the beast’s conscience, would she really be able to reign the instinctual monster in? Or would she be locked inside, while it rampaged again? Would she relieve the horrors that plague her? Would she be reminded what human flesh tastes like?
I step up to the wall where the word Nemesis is scrawled in ancient Greek, in blood. The boney remains of the woman who was slain to write this message lay to my right. When this mess is over, I really need to have her taken care of. Some part of Maigo was more human than Kaiju back then. She could think, could write in a language she never knew in life.
“I want you to remember what you’re giving up,” I say. “And to understand what you’re asking me to give up.”
She’s silent. Maybe waiting for a classic Hudson punch line. But I’m out of jokes. I point to the wall. “You remember doing this?”
She nods.
“Do you remember waking up?”
“It’s...it’s fuzzy. Like a dream. Not really.” She looks up at the blood that dripped from the word before drying. “This is my first real memory...after my... After my murder. Her murder.”
Maigo knows that she’s not the same Maigo who was killed, but only the carrier of her memories and DNA. That girl is still dead and buried, her soul gone to wherever the souls of innocent children go. Probably someplace better. Someplace without monsters.
“What about the second time?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“When you were—in a non-religious way—born again, from Nemesis.”
“I...I remember waking up in Beverly. You were there. And Ash. And Buddy.” She smiles at the memory.
“Do you remember how I looked?”
“Relieved,” she says. “And...injured? You had bruising around your neck. And the side of your face. That was from the Washington fight, right?”
I shake my head. “That was from you.”
She stares at me. “You woke up once in the three days between when Collins and I found you and your first memory. For ten minutes.”