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  Separation from her past returned her focus. She could sense them coming, their arrival imminent, together but separate. One would arrive at a place Endo once called home. The other would arrive on the other side of the planet, at a place the former voice had called home. She felt torn by mixed allegiances, but was surprised when Endo’s thoughts agreed with her own. Their home...their family...the only people in the world either of them cared about, would soon be in grave danger.

  Water swirled around the giant as she leaned forward and swept her tail back and forth. While forces gathered and weapons descended from the outer depths, Nemesis swam...for Boston.

  5

  I thrust my black-clad hands out toward the man scrawling his name in urine, but take no action. Instead, I turn to Collins and mouth, “What do we do about him?”

  She shrugs and mouths, “You’re in charge. You figure it out!”

  I glance back at Woodstock, who is watching things unfold from the safe distance of the cockpit. “How did you not see him?” I mouth at him, while thrusting my hands out at the large-bladdered man.

  I read the words, “I didn’t think—” on his lips and turn back to Collins.

  She pats the stun gun strapped to her hip. I have one, too.

  “I’m not going to start an international incident,” I mouth to her.

  “One of us has to,” she says, and though the words are conveyed in silence, I understand that she’s right. The stakes are higher than a squabble between nations. Even if this guy sees us, whatever lies beneath this island might be important enough to ruffle some international feathers. And if it’s dangerous, well, no one wants the Russians to have it. Except the Russians. Which means we need to get this done fast.

  “Okay,” I mouth. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  We both flinch at the sound of a thud from outside. The Russian soldier is sprawled on the rough terrain, lying beside the name Ivan, the N trailing off into a scattered dribble.

  Maigo stands above him, fist clenched. She looks back at us and flashes a grin. “There’s a reason mimes aren’t action heroes.”

  “Har har,” I say and step onto the island. The first thing I do is check the man’s pulse. Maigo is strong enough to kill a man with one punch, and while I don’t think that was her intent here, accidents happen. Especially to people still learning self-control. The man’s strong pulse relieves me. Had he been dead, I would have lied about it. Maigo doesn’t need another death on her conscience. But a dead Russian soldier would have made covering up this covert trip a lot harder. “Well, he’ll live. So that’s something.”

  When I stand up, Maigo looks a little concerned. “Is he really okay? I tried not to hit him too hard.”

  “He’ll wake up with a bad headache...a really bad headache.” I motion to the name sprayed on stone. “But Ivan seems like kind of a knob. He had it coming.”

  “A knob?” Maigo asks.

  I recently started expanding my colorful language to include the best of other cultures. Not because I’m worldly, but to keep things fresh, and so the people I spend the most time around don’t realize I have a potty mouth. And if no one knows the meaning, I can dilute it. “Umm, a jerk. Really, what kind of person writes their name in pee? I mean, if there had been snow, fine. I get that. But he splattered all over his boots. And he’d track that—”

  “Jon,” Collins says. She’s stepping away from us, looking over the rocky terrain.

  “Right,” I say. Sometimes being a father makes me nervous, and when that happens, I lose focus. Collins is pretty good at reeling me back in. “Let’s walk a grid. Twenty feet apart. We’re looking for a flat-topped, jagged-edged, oval stone.”

  Maigo looks over the desolate plain that is Big Diomede. Tufts of hearty grass grow in patches, but the rest of the surface pretty much fits the description I just gave. We’re looking for a needle in a haystack of needles. “Ugh,” she says, but she starts walking.

  Separated by twenty feet, Collins, Maigo and I hike across the island in silence. We cover a lot of ground, but there’s no way to know for sure if we missed something. When the rocky terrain ends at a field of grass, everyone shifts ten feet to the side and heads back toward Future Betty, which is once again invisible, thanks to the closed hatch. Any Russian bored enough to be watching this forgotten island will simply see three people wandering back and forth.

  We stop our second pass when Maigo reaches up and puts her hand on the invisible hull of Future Betty. Not sure how she knew it was there, but it’s just another item in a long list of unexplainable abilities. Beyond the physical strength and speed, like a little Kaiju trapped in a human body, her mind is capable of fantastic things. She’s got a knack for tech and is kind of a hacker savant—a humble genius mind in a powerful body—but it doesn’t stop there. Her psychic connection to me, for lack of a better phrase, hints at abilities that boggle the mind. As far as I know, the only mind she can currently peek inside of is mine, a side effect of sharing a mind back when she was 300 feet tall and stomping on Washington, D.C. But she kept her physical abilities hidden for a long time. I can’t rule out the possibility that she’s hiding more.

  I glance at the girl, twenty feet away, looking for a reaction to my thoughts. But her face is turned down to the ground, eyes flicking back and forth. She’s on task. Focused. Doing a better job than I am.

  “Let’s keep it going,” I say, rotating an index finger above my head. But the prodding isn’t necessary. Collins and Maigo have a bit of a lead on me now. Maigo just sweeps her gaze back and forth, like she can see through the stones, but it’s more likely that her mind can perfectly recall the photo we were sent. Collins moves a bit faster, shifting side to side, crouching and inspecting one rock after another. They’re a good team, but they’re even better for me.

  Despite the fact that I’m in the middle of nowhere, looking through a frigid wasteland for a rock that might not be here, I feel like a very lucky man. I’ve survived the worst this world has to offer and come out the other side blessed. The problem with that is that I’m more vulnerable than ever, and with an otherworldly threat now looming, I’m not sure how well I can do my job while worrying about them. Hell, I can’t even do a simple grid search without falling behind because I’m thinking about them!

  But it’s because I’ve fallen behind that I see Maigo stumble. Her hands go to her head like she’s just been struck. Her boots scuff through the grit. A new kind of panic springs me into action, “Ashley!”

  When she turns, the concern on Collins’s face mirrors how I feel. It’s a bitter-sweet moment. We really are a family.

  Neither of us reach Maigo in time to keep her from falling, but she doesn’t go far. She lands on both knees and leans forward onto her elbows, fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut. Something has shut down the strongest person on the planet. For a moment, I worry that she’s undergoing some kind of transformation. She frets about it more than I do, that she’ll become a monster like General Lance Gordon, the man who created her. He stole her heart, which regrew as she transformed into Nemesis. But she looks like the same girl now, only vulnerable, like when I found her encased in a fleshy pod, washed up on an island in the middle of the Potomac River.

  I crouch by her side. “Maigo.” I reach out for her, a father’s support.

  “Don’t,” she says, but it’s too late.

  My hand rests on the back of her head, and a jolt fuses me in place. Burning energy flows up my arm, through my torso and into my head. The island disappears. I hear Collins shout my name, but it fades like I’ve passed her in a train. An auditory glimmer. I can feel it. A force. Beneath me. I look down and see two eyes staring back.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  But for what?

  A voice. The words aren’t spoken, but I recognize the voice as Maigo’s.

  I turn and find myself back in my childhood home. Christmas morning. This is our meeting place. Where our inner selves—both still children—tend to meet when our mi
nds are connected.

  “What do you mean, ‘a voice?’” I ask.

  “It’s like a pilot,” she says.

  I sit down by the Christmas tree, the scent of pine washing over me, the glow of rainbow colored lights reflected on my skin and the red footie pajamas that I wore until I was twelve. “You’ve been holding back.”

  She sits next to me, her hair cut in a shorter bowl, dressed in a white nightgown that looks really expensive. She plucks a gift out from the pile. The snowmen on the wrapping paper look too happy. “It’s just a theory.”

  “Why keep it from me?”

  Paper tears as she peels tape back. “You know why.”

  Because it scares the shit out of both of us, I think, and then I remember that when we’re in this place, thinking is the same as speaking.

  “So let’s hear it,” I say, and I lift a gift up, pretending to be more casual than I feel, which again is a wasted effort. We’re sharing thoughts and feelings right now.

  “I wasn’t just inside Nemesis,” she says. “I helped guide her. To her, I was an anomaly. A confusing second voice that sometimes propelled her to action, and sometimes held her back. Her allegiances shifted with mine. And on some occasions, her actions were mine.”

  “Nothing...you know, gross, though, right?”

  She rolls her eyes and opens the gift. “Argyle socks?”

  “My mother had the taste of an eighty year old man.” I start peeling back layers of Santa paper from the gift I’m holding. “So you were able to control Nemesis?”

  “To an extent. Like we saw Endo do in Salt Lake,” she says, and I remember how Nemesis’s savage fighting style became more refined and disciplined after the man allowed himself to be enveloped by her. I’d always thought it was a side effect of how Nemesis was created, like the merging of very different genetic codes. But if Maigo’s theory is right, Nemesis requires a symbiotic relationship to function at her best.

  “But what does that have to do with the thing beneath us?” I can still feel its eyes gazing up at us, watching, but it doesn’t feel like a Kaiju. It doesn’t feel alive at all.

  “It sees me,” she says, revealing that it’s not me the thing is watching. It’s her.

  I tear open the gift and smile.

  “This was a good one,” she says, and takes the long book from my hands. She reads the title. “Scientific Progress Goes ‘Boink.’” Calvin and Hobbes?”

  “It’s funny,” I say.

  She flips the book open, but the pages are blank. Our connection is slipping.

  “Why is it looking at you?” I ask, worried that at least one of us will be unconscious when we separate.

  “It’s looking for a voice.” She puts the book down, sighs and looks up at me. “It’s looking for a pilot.”

  6

  A flash of painful white light burns up the Christmas tree and erases Maigo. I’m tossed back, my body heavier and limbs longer, adult again. The cold hard ground of Big Diomede receives me with a complete lack of kindness or regard for my comfort. Jagged rocks push into my back, but I avoid serious injury thanks to the body armor, which absorbs much of the impact and prevents me from being impaled like some Neanderthal in a rock-knife fight. Consciousness returns just a moment before impact, and I manage to lean my head up just enough to avoid cracking my skull.

  Despite the lack of serious injury, the physical jolt combined with the psychological effect of being propelled from Maigo’s mind leaves me dazed and groaning. The conversation with Maigo filters back through my thoughts like a dream, nearly forgotten, but replaying. I hear Collins saying my name. She’s concerned. I tune her out, remembering the details. The familiar setting helps. Christmas. Gifts. Our child selves.

  A voice.

  A pilot.

  My eyes snap open to a relieved Collins.

  “A pilot,” I say.

  “What happened?” Collins asks.

  I reach up and take Collins’s offered hand. She hoists me up. “I was in her head again.” I look for Maigo and find her kneeling ten feet away, and realize just how far I was flung. No wonder landing hurt so much.

  Maigo’s hands are on the ground, eyes closed. She looks almost peaceful.

  “Christmas?” Collins asks.

  I nod. “How long—”

  “Before you were turned into a human skeet?”

  “I went that high?”

  She points her finger in an arc and whistles as she traces the path I took, up and away from Maigo, ending at where I landed. “It looked like you were shocked. You were only in contact for a second.”

  “Felt like minutes.” I stretch my arm as I head back to Maigo, looking her over for signs of injury. But she wasn’t flung by our separation. If anything, she looks strangely at peace now. I crouch beside her, out of arm’s reach. “Maigo?”

  No reply.

  “Earth to Maigo.”

  She slowly shushes me. “Shhh.”

  Collins looks as confused as me. Maigo doesn’t seem to be in pain. And she’s not unconscious. So what’s she doing?

  “Hey, boss?” It’s Woodstock in my ear bud. I glance back to where I know Future Betty is waiting, but see only the barren, foggy island.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Everything okay out there?” With the array of cameras surrounding the craft’s hull projecting the view outside on the interior surfaces, Woodstock can watch everything that’s happening outside. “That was quite the swan dive. Didn’t quite stick the landing.”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “What about Maigo?”

  “Not sure.” I lean down to look at her face. She looks calm, but her eyes are shifting behind her eyelids, like she’s in REM sleep.

  “Can she move?” he asks.

  I’m about to clarify the situation when I realize his asking any of these questions is abnormal. He’s generally willing to kick back, listen to whatever fifty years too young pop star he’s into now, and wait to be summoned. So why is he suddenly interested in Maigo’s mobility?

  “Woodstock...what’s our situation?”

  “Cloudy with a chance of Russian MiGs.”

  I stand and look to the western sky. “Next time, lead with that bit of information.”

  “They’re actually north of us,” he says, revealing that he is indeed watching. “Headed toward Alaska. They’re probably just probing our response times. They do it a lot. And three F-22s have scrambled out of Eielson to escort the MiGs until they’re headed away from U.S. airspace. But...”

  “We’re on Russian soil,” I say. “They can’t help us here.”

  “Bingo.”

  I crouch back down beside Maigo, leaning my face low to the ground, so I can look up at hers. “Maigo. I know you can feel what’s down there. But we need to find a way to it. Now. Can you—”

  “It’s testing me,” she whispers.

  “Testing you? How?”

  She gives a slight shake of her head. “I think...I’m not sure. But it’s watching me. I can feel it.” She lifts a hand and places it on her head.

  “Do you know what it is?” Collins asks.

  “Is it a Kaiju?” I add. “Like Nemesis?”

  “I...it’s big. But I don’t know what it is.” She grunts in pain, and I nearly reach out to hold her again. “Ugh. It... Gestorumque?”

  She speaks the last word in a deeper voice, with inflections that are not her own.

  “No,” she says, then in the deeper voice, “Atlantide?”

  “No,” she answers herself.

  “Vixnoctus?” the deep voice asks.

  Maigo seems torn by the question, brow furrowed, fingers gripping and crushing stones to powder. Before she can answer, Woodstock’s voice returns.

  “MiGs just turned south! They’ll be here in two minutes! Get back here now!”

  “Maigo,” I say, knowing she could hear Woodstock just as well as Collins and I. “We need to go.”

  “Can’t,” she says.

  “We’re employed b
y the U.S. government. My face is recognizable. Our presence here won’t be looked upon kindly, and they’ll have a good idea of why we’re here. Whatever is buried beneath us needs to wait, or they’ll—”

  “It won’t let them,” she says.

  “Jon,” Collins says, her voice a warning, her eyes on the sky to the north.

  “I can’t move her,” I say. Even if she didn’t physically resist, my psychic bond with her will pull me back into her connection with the thing beneath us and send me flying again. Maybe worse.

  Collins knows this as much as I do. She also knows that she doesn’t have the same bond with Maigo. Before I can protest, she leans down and slides her hands under Maigo’s armpits. When she’s not flung away or sent into a trance, she hoists and grunts. Maigo is the same size as the average teenage girl, but far heavier thanks to the density of her muscle mass. But when it comes to the human variety of toughness and determination, Collins is hard to match.

  Maigo doesn’t fight the pull, and the moment she’s lifted away, her body goes limp.

  “One minute!” Woodstock says, and I see the Future Betty’s hatch opening out of thin air, just twenty feet away. Woodstock moved closer to us without us even sensing the craft’s approach or descent.

  Collins isn’t going to make it in time, so I run up next to her and reach out.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Have to risk it.” Hoping that Maigo’s connection with the thing below us really has been severed, I reach under her left arm and lift.

  Nothing happens.

  “Let’s go!” I say, and together we drag Maigo across the rough surface, leaving twin trails in the loose grit and stones. She’s hard to get up the ramp, but Woodstock starts raising it before we’re inside, helping lift Maigo’s heft. The raising ramp dumps us inside the passenger compartment. We sprawl on the floor, a tangle of limbs. “Go, go, go!” I shout.

  “Hold on,” Woodstock whispers and points up. Through the ceiling, which is projecting the sky above, I see two slate gray MiG-29s cut through the sky overhead. They bank hard to the left and continue in a tight circle around the island. They’re looking for us. And they’ll see Ivan out there, sprawled on the ground beside his piss-scrawled name.