Project Nemesis (A Kaiju Thriller) (7 page)

Distant voices echo through the forest. They’re looking for us.

I hobble down the hill, feeling like an old man, and pause at the big guy’s body.

“No I.D. on him,” Collins says. “Couldn’t find any tattoos, either.”

I reach my hand out to her. “
iPhone
.”

She pulls it out and after swiping it on, hands it to me.
“Still no service.”

“Don’t need the phone,” I say, starting the phone’s photo app. I take a quick picture of the man’s full prone body, and then a close up of his face. Voices get louder, rolling down from the top of the hill. They’ve spotted the bodies.
“Time to go.”

10

Ten Hours Later

Dr. Kendra Elliot’s eyes looked small behind her thick glasses, despite the fact that they were open wide. The bloodshot orbs stung, because she refused to blink for as long as she could stand. She didn’t want to miss a second.

The subject—
Maigo
—was exceptional.

Elliot had stayed in the lab for the past ten hours, just watching. She’d left just twice, both times to use the bathroom. She hadn’t eaten.
Hadn’t drunk anything.
Hadn’t slept.
And she’d never felt better.

The rate of growth seemed to be following some kind of Moore’s law, which observes that computers double in power and speed every two years. Except instead of doubling every two years,
Maigo’s
growth doubled every two hours. The girl had far exceeded Elliot’s calculations, and further calculations became impossible to predict. She guessed the girl was eighteen, based on muscle tone (which looked like an Olympian’s), height, weight and development of her more feminine features.

And she was feminine.
For the most part.
Her breasts were full.
Her hips wide.
A cloud of black hair billowed around
Maigo’s
face, obscuring her smooth jaw, lush lips and long-lashed eyes. Elliot felt pangs of jealousy mixed with surges of revolt. A week ago,
Maigo
had been a real girl, though she hadn’t lived to see any of these features develop. That she had possibly been murdered by her father filled Elliot with an anger born from her own past.

Elliot shook her head. The life this girl could have lived...

Envy crept into her thoughts once again, but then she reminded herself that the girl, the real
Maigo
, was dead and buried. The picture-perfect thing of beauty would never exist in the world outside this laboratory, and within the day, this
Maigo
would be dead.

Again.

“My God,” General Gordon said. “Look at her.”

Elliot yelped and spun around. Gordon stood right behind her. “I—I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You were too busy ogling her,” he said, pointing to
Maigo
.

Elliot blushed despite the accusation not being entirely true. Admiring was a more accurate word, though she didn’t bother correcting the man.

“Not that I can blame you,” he said, walking around the spherical womb, looking at
Maigo
from every angle. The curved glass distorted the view like a fish bowl, magnifying the portion of her body directly in front of the viewer. “I might have you make me another one when—” He stopped walking. “What’s that?”

Elliot stood and walked around the womb, stopping beside the General. He was pointing to the dimpled area where the girl’s back met her butt. Elliot fought her rising jealousy again and said, “Did you call me over her to admire her—”

“Base of the spine,” Gordon said.
“Just above her ass.”

Elliot leaned in closer, squinting. There was a small bump at the base of her spine.
“Could be the subject’s tail bone.
Some people have oversized tailbones.
Would be her single flaw.”

“I’d like a closer look,” he said.

“It’s really not a big—”

“Now.”

Elliot rolled her eyes and stomped back to her chair. She double-tapped the touch screen and began accessing the camera controls.

“How long until she’s ready?”
Gordon asked.

Elliot released a single submersible camera into the womb. The small device operated like a baseball-sized
ROV
, complete with sample-taking abilities and robotic arms. “Best guess, two more hours.”

“My team is on standby,” he said.

“Your team?”

“Surgeons.”
He stepped around the womb, eyes still on
Maigo
. “They’re in the med-lab, awaiting delivery.”

Using the touch-screen controls, Elliot manually steered the
ROV
toward the anomaly at the base of
Maigo’s
spine.
“Delivery of what?”

“The girl,” he said. “And me.”

The display showed the view from the
ROV’s
camera as it lowered through the womb. Curves of tan flesh passed by like the polished wall of some deep sea discovery. “You’re really going through with it?”

“Either that or I drop dead sometime in the next six months.”

The aberration came into view. Elliot pushed the
ROV
nearer for a close up look.
“That soon?”

“Was that hope I heard in your voice?”

Elliot glanced up at him, terrified that he was serious. He was smiling, which in its own way, was just as frightening.

“
Cardiomyopathy
,” he said.
“Weak heart.
Barely moving enough oxygen to my brain as it is.
Can’t run.
Can’t get too angry.
Can’t screw.
The pleasures of life have been stolen from me. You’re going to give them back.”

Elliot cringed, wondering if he was alluding to her previous offer. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but she was fairly certain she would regret it in the coming weeks, if the General survived the operation.

“Here we go,” she said, focusing on the touch-screen image. The bump came into view. It was nondescript.
A lump.
“Could be excess bone growth.
Could be a tumor.
A side effect of the rapid growth.
I still have no idea what was in that DNA sample you gave me. It’s hard to say, but I think we’ll be fine as long we don’t see any other strange growths in the next few hours.” Then an idea came to her. “It could be a vestigial tail.”

Gordon remained calm, as though this idea didn’t concern him at all.
“A tail?”

“It’s rare, only twenty-three cases reported since the eighteen hundreds, but we’re screwing with nature here. We all have tails in the womb, as embryos, but they usually get absorbed into the rest of the body after the first thirty-five days. It’s a dormant trait, weeded out by evolution, and typically reduced to a normal coccyx.
Your tailbone.”
Elliot moved the camera a little closer. The
ROV’s
small light seemed to reflect off the surface of the girl’s skin. “But it’s not a problem. Think of it like wisdom teeth. People don’t need them anymore, so we sometimes have them removed. It’s cosmetic. Not functional. It’s a—huh.”

“What?” Gordon asked, leaning over the touch screen.

“The skin over the bump,” she said.
“Watch.”
Elliot turned the
ROV
light side to side. The skin around the bump glowed in the light, but the skin covering the aberration shimmered.

“The skin is reflective?” Gordon asked.

Elliot didn’t reply. Instead she worked the controls, getting even closer with the
ROV
. The view screen showed a needle-tipped limb stretching out toward the lump.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting a biopsy,” Elliot said. The camera zoomed in closer, blurred and then focused.

“Looks like goose bumps,” the general said.

Elliot guided the needle closer to the skin. “I would have said scales.”

“Too lumpy,” Gordon said.

The needle struck the skin and stopped.

“The hell?”
Elliot said. “The needle couldn’t break the skin.
Should have slipped right through.”

“That a problem?” Gordon asked.

Elliot ignored the general, focusing on the task at hand. She put the
ROV
in reverse, pulled back a foot and then pushed it forward again, charging forward like a knight with a javelin. The needle struck and this time punched through the skin.

Maigo
flinched violently.

The sudden movement from inside the tank made Elliot jump so bad that she spilled out of her chair. When she recovered, she found Gordon standing a few feet back, one hand over his chest, the other fumbling with a pill bottle. But his eyes never left the tank.

“She doesn’t have a brain,” Gordon said. “Just what she needs to maintain basic functions?”

“Yes,” Elliot said. All of their subjects were designed that way. Helped to get past the moral loophole of the bodies they grew being actual people. No brain. No soul. “She shouldn’t feel a thing.”

Gordon got the pill bottle open, dropped two blue ovals into his hand and dry swallowed them. “Then what the fuck was that?”

Elliot picked
herself
up off the floor and got back into the chair. She looked back at the screen and frowned. The lump wiggled.

Vestigial tails in humans were functionless. There were no muscles to control them. They just hung.
Useless flesh.

This was not vestigial. This was the real thing.

Maigo
had a tail.

“Keep a close eye on it,” Gordon said. He looked strong and collected again. “If you see any changes to her skin anywhere else on her body we will go forward with the procedure right away. Otherwise, prep to have her moved to medical in two hours.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Elliot said. “We don’t know what changes are taking place inside her body.”

“That’s why we’re going to cut her open and take a look before it’s my turn.”

Elliot frowned. It was a stupid idea. And while she didn’t have strong feelings about whether or not Gordon died, she wanted him to live simply because Endo would pay her a visit soon after the General closed his eyes for good. Endo might very well liquidate everyone on site.

As though on cue, Endo’s voice came over a two way radio clipped to the General’s belt. “Longhorn, this is Hound, come in.” The sentence was followed by a chirp that let Gordon know Endo was done speaking.

Gordon lifted the radio to his mouth and spoke, “I hear you, Hound. Give me a sit-rep.”

“Sheriff Collins and the man with her have not yet been eliminated.”

Gordon grumbled to himself before replying.
“Why the hell not?
You’ve been at it an entire day.”

“They have proven to be...resourceful,” Endo said. “Elusive.”

More grumbling.
Elliot could tell the General was working hard at not getting upset.

“We have a perimeter set up,” Endo continued. “The roads are being patrolled. And if they keep heading on their current course they will have to cross seventy-five miles of rough terrain before reaching civilization.”

Gordon rolled his neck and said, “Hound, I need you back here.”

“But we’re close.”

“Keep your men on it. Patrol the roads. Scour the woods. But I need you back here.
Now.”

“Longhorn, sir,” Endo said, “is it...time?”

“Yes, Hound.” Gordon looked at his wristwatch. “1800 hours.”

“I’ll be back in thirty,” Endo said, his voice quick now.
“Out.”