1941539114 (S) Read Online Free PDF Page B

people make mistakes,” she says, speaking as my field partner more than my wife. “Mistakes get people killed.”
    “Thanks, Yoda.” I force a grin, but she sees right through it, raising an eyebrow that says I better talk.
    “The short version is that when I started this job—”
    “It was easy.”
    “It was easy, but not in the way you’re thinking. It was easy because I had no one to worry about. It was just me in the field. Now... We’re married.” I motion to Maigo. “We have an adopted daughter. Hawkins and Joliet might be living in sin still, but they’ve got Lilly. And Watson and Cooper have little Ted. The FC-P is now made up of families. Hell, even Lilly has a brood of her own.”
    “Babies having babies,” Collins says with a mock shake of her head. She nearly gets a laugh out of me.
    “It’s just...”
    “You want the good without the bad,” she says, interrupting again in a way that would get my shoulder slugged if I did it. “But here’s the thing. Without Nemesis, there would be no Maigo. We would have never met. Without GOD, there would be no Lilly. Without the hellish circumstances of the last few years, our family would have never come together in the first place.”
    “I’d still be flying air tours,” Woodstock says. “You know how many people want air tours of Maine?”
    “You could at least pretend our conversation is private,” I tell him.
    “That’s what I’m doing,” Maigo says, who could probably hear us from fifty feet away. “And she’s right, Dad.”
    My head lolls back, mouth agape. I let out a slow groan.
    “What’s that you say to Hawkins when you’re playing Call of Duty?” Collins asks.
    “‘Nut up,’” Maigo and Woodstock both say.
    “Nut up, Jon,” Collins says. “And instead of worrying about the worst, maybe think about what good might come from the fight.”
    Maigo hits the button for the rear hatch, and it lowers without making a sound. Forty degree Arctic air swirls in, stinging my cheeks and drawing my eyes to the barren landscape...where a man dressed in olive green, an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, stands with his back to us. He’s taking a leak, and I think he’s writing his name in Russian on a wide, flat rock.

 
     
    4
     
    The desperation of victims, guilt of perpetrators and rage of the willingly evil washed over her in waves. Every day. Every minute. Only the deepest depths of the crushing ocean gave her peace from the madness of the world. All those little creatures and their big emotions. One at a time, only the exceptional reached her thoughts, but collectively...they were enough to chase her away. People had once been little more than food, sustaining her rapid growth. But then, with the emergence of a conscience—a second voice really—she understood that they were somehow more than that.
    That voice was gone now, replaced by another, less concerned with the welfare of the small creatures, but lacking rage, and more willing to let humanity be. It was a voice of contentment. Of belonging. So she and the voice hid from the world, finding a symbiosis, which both enjoyed. Conscience became intellect. Cravings, once primal and unguided, now held meaning. The world cried for justice, for vengeance, which she would soon bring, but those without guilt should be spared. The new voice believed this, just as the old voice had, but the emotion was supported by logic and confidence, lacking the chaotic emotion brought by the previous voice.
    Now, Nemesis understood .
    Now, Nemesis knew the name of her second voice: Katsu Endo.
    He had been one of them. At best, food. At worst, judged. And she knew he had blood on his hands. But far less than she. And together, they had perhaps done more good than harm. What united their kindred spirits was a lack of guilt over their previous actions. They had done what needed doing.
    In the stark darkness of the Puerto Rico Trench, where she was sustained by a large species of primeval shark, she