The view here isn’t all that different from the Crow’s Nest below. I can still see the ruin of what once was Beverly’s coastline. Except out here, I can smell it, too. I barely notice the stink of ash. On the shore of what was once Dane Street Beach, a crew of Zoomb employees have descended like vultures. With practiced efficiency, they’re disassembling Scrion’s body and carrying it away by helicopter, large chunks of dark meat dripping brown all over the city.
This might even be the same crew that dismantled the Nemesis-Prime corpse—the first in a long line of people responsible for the birth of a city-destroying monster. And now they’re back to work, this time with the President’s stamp of approval, despite my best attempts to change his mind. In the months following the Nemesis disaster, I had the President’s ear. He took my warnings, responded to my requests and increased my budget exponentially. But since Nemesis’s reemergence, the man has gone silent. Since ordering me to work with Endo, he hasn’t taken my calls, and requests from the White House are once again being filtered through the mustache brigade that is the DHS.
I’m not out of the loop. Not entirely. And I’m still in charge of the FC-P, but there is an election coming up, and Zoomb’s support can help fill ballot boxes. Strangely, the security I feel about my job comes from Endo. Sure, he’s a threat, but he needs me.
After what happened to Endo, Collins would have me strung up and lashed with a barbed cat o’ nine tails before letting me mind-meld with Nemesis, but I’m convinced it’s our best option. Not only is Nemesis still a threat, but now there’s Gordon and three other Kaiju that are still growing. Something has to be done. Something drastic. And if I know the powers that be, and I do, they’re going to start dropping nukes. Call me crazy, but I’d rather risk a coma if it meant not dropping nukes on American soil. Or any soil for that matter.
“What do you think?” I ask. “Am I crazy?”
“Craziest son of a bitch, I know,” Woodstock says.
I spin around in surprise. Hadn’t heard the man’s arrival.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Didn’t know you were there.”
He looks back and forth. “Who the hell were you talkin’ to then?”
I hitch a thumb toward Betty, resting silently on her landing pad. If anyone understands talking to inanimate objects, it’s Woodstock. He proves it by nodding like he should have known. “She’s a good listener.”
“Ayuh,” I say, offering some traditional Maine agreement.
He joins me at the roof’s edge. Sits atop the small wall, oblivious to the height. “You thinkin’ what I think you’re thinkin’?”
I sit down next to him, watching a crane peel back Scrion’s turtle shell-like carapace. “Probably.” Woodstock and I are often in simpatico. It’s why I like having him as a pilot. But it also means he knows when I’m thinking of doing something stupid or reckless. “You won’t tell Collins?”
“This one of them ‘bros before hoes’ situations?”
I nearly fall four stories from laughing. Collins would kick his balls into his brains if she heard him, and he knows it, which makes it all the more funny.
He shakes his head. “Can’t say as I’d blame her for stopping you, though. Heard ’bout Cooper and Watson. Having a kid. Good news. It’s not yours, but it could have been. And before you tell me you use protection, I fought my way past a condom and a diaphragm. If the kid wants to be born bad enough, it will happen. And if it doesn’t...well, you still have your lady to think about.”
I’m not sure what to say. Woodstock has never held me back before.
Then he goes and reads my mind again. “I’m not telling you not to do it, mind you. It’s risky, but that’s our job. I’m just saying that the damage you do by sneaking, by risking your life without saying goodbye, would be far worse than being up front and disagreeing. Even if she’s pissed. The easier option for you, in this case, will be the harder to forgive.”
“Sage relationship advice from an old, single man,” I say.
“The ladies don’t come to me for advice, son,” Woodstock says. His grin turns wicked. “They come to me for—”
Part of me is relieved by the sound of approaching feet that interrupts Woodstock’s sentence. The other part is horrified when I turn to find Collins, just a few feet away, arms crossed. She heard. I know she heard. But I don’t say anything yet. She has company.
“Endo,” I say, climbing off the wall and standing. “You’re awake.” He’s more than awake. He looks good. As usual. Like he’d suffered little more than the loss of a good night’s sleep. I look around his shoulder, carefully avoiding Collin’s eyes. “Alessi isn’t with you?”
It’s a strange question, I know, but the two have been inseparable since we first encountered them in Hong Kong.
Endo squints at me. Collins’s brows furrow deeper. They have both misunderstood my interest. Like I need any more help tightening the noose around my neck.
“She’s coordinating with Cooper and Watson,” Endo says.
The casualness with which he uses their names bothers me, like he’s just part of the team and always has been. It’s the familiar tone. He hasn’t earned it.
Woodstock clears his throat at me.
Right. Honesty. No TV romance.