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

The rest of the fiftieth floor seemed to be empty. Large spaces lining the glassed-in hallway they walked through were filled with endless rows of cubicles, but not a single person. Endo looked at his watch. 7:15.

Apparently, Stanton had stayed late and the receptionist along with him. Because an alarm had yet to be sounded and no more guards encountered, Endo assumed the now dead guards were a skeleton crew nightshift. Their bodies, and the receptionist’s, might not be found until the next morning. If they could find the security suite, deleting the footage of the killing should be easy.

But did Gordon know all of this before he went on a killing spree, or was it just dumb luck? In either case, there was a chance they could walk away without being implicated in the murders. No, that’s not true, Endo thought. The elevator camera would show them getting off on the 50th floor and that footage would go to the building’s security feed, not Zoomb’s.

“Jenny, is that you?” the man’s voice snapped Endo back to the here and now.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Paul,” Gordon replied, pushing through the unlocked wooden door. They entered the large, but sparsely decorated office together, but Endo hung back and put on a confused and fearful expression. The far wall of the office was all glass and looked out over Boston and the harbor beyond.

Paul Stanton looked confused—his forehead furrowed deeply, forming wrinkles nearly to the top of his gleaming bald head. He held an open bottle of wine, which now hovered over two glasses. His coat was off and his tie was on the solid wood desk, next to the glasses.

Jenny, it seemed, was a little more than a receptionist. And since Stanton was married and had three children, this knowledge could have gotten them anything they wanted to know. But Endo didn’t think that’s how things were going to work out.

“Gordon?” Stanton said, sounding as confused as he should be. “What are you doing here?” His eyes locked on the gun. “Where’s Jenny?”

“Dead,” Gordon says.

Endo had never once been shocked by the General’s usually blunt way of speaking to people, but this bold admission made him stumble. Gordon didn’t notice. “Helluva view. Endo, get the blinds.”

Endo didn’t see any blinds, but found a light switch by the window that tinted the whole window black.

Stanton picked up the phone and hammered his finger down on a single button.

“Your security team is dead, too,” Gordon said, slowly walking toward Stanton.

The CEO of Zoomb hung up the phone and then started redialing. No doubt 911. But Gordon raised the pistol and fired. It was an expert shot, far above the skill level the General normally exhibited at the range. It wasn’t just his speed and strength that were changing, it was everything. The bullet struck the phone and tore it to pieces.

Stanton shouted in surprise and jumped back. “What do you want?”

“Everything you have about the creature.”

“B—but why?” Stanton asked. “Why now?”

“I gave it to you, but it belongs to me. It always has. And now I want to know everything about it. Where is it? What is it? Where is it from?”

“B—but we haven’t learned much,” Stanton said. “It’s unlike anything else on Earth. Our best people can’t make any sense of it.”

“Lies,” Gordon said, raising the pistol toward Stanton’s head.

The man screamed and fell back, cowering with his hands over his face, like it would protect him from a .50-caliber round.

There’s no way he is lying, Endo thought. With Jenny and the security team dead, his only hope of surviving is telling the truth. He must realize that.

“We’ve only determined two things with certainty!” Stanton shouted.

“Go on,” Gordon said, keeping the pistol leveled at the man’s head.

“It’s alien,” Stanton said.

“From where?”

“We don’t know!”

“And the second thing?”

“We were able to analyze its stomach contents,” Stanton said. “It—it ate people. Exclusively.”

Upon hearing this, Gordon lowered the gun and laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“It’s true!” Stanton said, misreading Gordon’s humor as disbelief. He pointed to his PC. “Everything I have is on the computer. See for yourself!”

When Gordon finally controlled his laughter, he wiped a tear from his eye, raised the pistol in the air and put his finger on the trigger. “I believe you, Paul, I just don’t like you.”

When Endo saw the muscles in Gordon’s arms flex, he acted on instinct, knowing that he couldn’t allow Stanton to die. While Zoomb might have only had a limited knowledge of the creature then, someday they would uncover the rest.

Paul Stanton’s death now fell into Endo’s unacceptable range, while Gordon had just made his own life forfeit. Endo stepped forward and kicked up hard, striking Gordon’s hand. The strong General didn’t drop the weapon, but his shot went high, punching a large hole in the wall above Stanton’s head.