Project Hyperion (A Kaiju Thriller) (Kaiju #4)

That’s when the rope holding the passenger side door shut since I was T-boned two months ago decides to give way. I spill out backwards, landing hard on my back. I groan and slowly open my eyes. They snap the rest of the way open when I see four clawed paws rounding the front of the truck.

I feel the holstered gun in my hand and with a practiced familiarity, unbutton the clasp and free the weapon with one smooth move. I turn the muzzle skyward and without looking, fire two shots in the air before pointing the weapon at the approaching jaws.

But I don’t fire.

There’s no need.

Even mamma bears can be spooked. With a cry that sounds like a deeper version of the cubs’ call, the bear backpedals and runs away, heading toward the lake. It calls out again as it passes the cabin and is joined by the two cubs, who scurry along behind. The trio run until I can’t see them. With any luck, they’ll keep going until they’re miles away.

Gun in hand, I feel safer than I did inside the truck’s cab. Speaking of which... I lean my head up, and look at Betty. “I put up with a lot. You know I do. But you almost got me killed here.”

I lean my head back, catching my breath. “It’s just not working out, Betty.”

It’s a joke. For myself. Fueled by the elation of not being gored. But it actually makes me a little sad. I get to my feet, leaning my battered body on the truck’s hood. I pat the dull red metal. “I don’t mean it. I should have got the door fixed months ago.”

But I didn’t. Because that’s the way I am. I make a mental note to change my lax ways before they get me killed. Then I grab the twelve pack and head into the cabin.





4



“Dr. Elliot, wake up.”

Dr. Kendra Elliot had never been a graceful sleeper. She snored. She drooled. And she always, always woke up grumpy. But today, her fury at being woken was quickly consumed by confusion. She wasn’t in bed. She was in the lab. And it was a voice that had woken her, not her alarm.

General Gordon’s voice.

He stood next to her, a grin on his face.

She mistook the smile as mockery and quickly checked herself over. Some of her hair had come loose, but most of it was still tied back. She wiped away the crust from her eyes and was happy to find her cheek free of moisture. All in all, she didn’t seem too out of sorts.

So why was Gordon smiling at her so queerly?

When she couldn’t take it anymore, she asked, “What?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. His signature expression. No one really understood how he got the eyebrow so high on his forehead, but everyone knew what it meant. You missed something obvious, which wasn’t always true. Sometimes what Gordon considered obvious was a mystery to the rest of the world.

She looked behind her, half expecting to see Endo there, leveling a gun at her forehead, but all she saw was the curved back wall of the white lab. A row of computer stations and hardware lined the wall of the round room. Centrifuges, nucleic acid extraction systems, a fluorescent spectrophotometer, incubators, DNA hybridization ovens, heat and cooling baths, electron and florescent microscopes and a long freezer—everything required for a multitude of biological sciences. The long countertop stopped at a line of refrigerators with glass doors. The first five held carefully labeled samples. The sixth, lunch, though that fridge was nearly empty today.

I’m alone, she remembered.

And then she remembered why, and whipped her head around toward the lab’s centerpiece. She gasped, nearly falling from her chair.

“Yes,” Gordon said. “Magnificent.”

It wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Impossible came to mind first, and she was in the impossible business.

The center of the room was an artificial womb. While spherical in appearance, the top and bottom didn’t complete the eight-foot-diameter sphere. The bottom led to a filtration system that constantly sterilized the embryonic fluid that filled the womb, running it beneath a powerful UV light. The top of the sphere, which could only be reached from the floor above the lab, was the only way to access the inside. A black umbilical hung from the ceiling, coiling and twisting in the clear fluid, attached to the body that floated at the center of the womb. It served the same function as a normal umbilical cord, supplying the fetus with the nutrients and raw materials it needed to grow.

“How did you do it?” Gordon asked.

Elliot stood slowly and placed her hand against the glass. The fetus inside the womb was at least fifteen inches from head to toe. She glanced down to the touch-screen controls and tapped the black screen twice, waking it. The weight, measured by fluid displacement, showed 3.5 pounds. She shook her head.

Impossible.