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

2



Dr. Kendra Elliot threw a manila folder across her office and let loose a string of curses that would make a sailor squirm. The fifty-seven sheets of data-laden paper exploded from the folder like confetti, half en route to the wall, half when the folder hit it. By the time the last sheet slipped onto the dull gray industrial carpet, Elliot’s anger had been replaced by regret. The pages weren’t numbered, and though the pages declared her failure, careful study of what went wrong would help her find her mistake, and correct it.

Hopefully before I die, Elliot thought.

She stood from behind the executive desk that she neither liked nor had gotten accustomed to in the four years she’d sat behind it. Her hip somehow found the desk’s corner as she rounded the cherry wood behemoth. She grunted in pain and clenched her teeth against her returning anger. She wanted to scream out a curse, but held her tongue. She was one of the lead researchers at BioLance, a government-funded laboratory working on a slew of different projects ranging from gene-splicing to tissue regenerating foam and to the cure for cancer, and she did her best to act the part. Elliot’s current focus was Project: ROG (Rapid Organ Growth). The lab operated like many others around the country with one glaring difference. BioLance didn’t exist. It was a code name.

And despite the fact that the facility appeared to be run like any other high-tech firm, Elliot was under no illusions; she worked for the Man. She didn’t mind. The money was great, the resources essentially unlimited and the staff beyond comparison. More than that, since the lab didn’t officially exist, and no one’s real names appeared on any documents, she could bend, or break, any laws she needed to with two exceptions. The two strictly enforced rules were:

1. Never do anything to endanger the public.

2. Never do anything to reveal BioLance, its resources, experiments, data and personnel identities to the public.

She suspected that rule number one was actually an extension of rule number two, rather than genuine concern for public welfare. As a result, the facility and the staff that worked and lived there were guarded closely. She didn’t even know where the lab was located, though she suspected the Northeast, based on the trees and terrain she could see through her office window, though it could have easily been Canada.

Elliot glanced down at the corner of the desk that had jabbed her hip. The finish was actually worn from the number of times she’d run into it. And it wasn’t because she had childbearing hips. Just the opposite. Her body was tall and rail-like. Not even the tight-fitting power suit she wore could accentuate her curves. There was nothing to accentuate.

It wasn’t the desk’s fault, either. At seven feet long, the desk was large, but the office was far larger, accommodating several bookcases, cabinets and an executive table with ten chairs, with room to spare. It was her eyes that betrayed her. She wore thick glasses that might have been in style thirty years previous. They shrunk her blue eyes to the size of almonds and ruined her depth perception.

With a sigh, Elliot bent down and picked at the fresh carpet of strewn pages. She put them in order by memory, scanning each page as she picked it up. When she reached the final page, her knees were sore, but she didn’t stand. She just looked at the ten numbered lines of text and the word “Failed” next to each one.

She hated that word with a passion. Failed. She’d heard it over and over again during her first twenty years of life, as her father, who wanted sons and got one girl, pushed her into sports. She had the body for it, strong, fast and agile, but not the mind. Despite being fiercely competitive, her intellect rarely focused on the field, court or rink.

His death, and the money left to his failure of a daughter, finally freed her to pursue her dreams. Eight years and four degrees later, her past caught up with her. Someone figured out that dear old Dad hadn’t died of entirely natural causes and she was the only suspect. But she wasn’t arrested. She was offered a job.

But she was still failing.

She crumpled the page into a tight ball and tossed it into the barrel across the room.

“You should have played basketball,” General Lance Gordon said from the doorway.

Had it been anyone else, she would have exploded with a torrent of verbal abuse. But Gordon was her employer, as well as the man who recruited her, and as such, he knew she was a murderer. Which might be why he stayed by the door.

She stood, straightened her dress and placed the folder on the desk. “What can I do for you, General?”

“For starters, be honest.”

“About?”