NEMESIS

  By Jeremy Robinson

  Description:

  New York Times and #1 Audible bestselling author, Jeremy Robinson, explores an alternate reality in which the events of Project Nemesis, soon to be a TV series from Chad Stahelski (director of John Wick 1 – 4) and Sony Pictures Television, played out very differently, creating a horrific and thrilling new world where sacrifice and vengeance are part of everyday life.

  From the ashes of a devastated Boston, a harrowing legend emerges. Thirteen years prior, the colossal kaiju, Nemesis, ravaged the city in her relentless pursuit of retribution. Today, mankind's survival teeters on the sacrificial offerings atop a chilling monolith known as The Altar, where the condemned pay the ultimate price to prevent Nemesis's wrath from consuming humanity.

  Agent Graham, a grizzled operative on the brink of retirement, finds himself tethered to the fiery, untested Agent Tilly. Together, they are the unlikeliest of partners within the Nemesis Special Operations group, the government's first line of defense against the looming shadow of the massive Goddess of Vengeance. Their mission? To hunt down the enigmatic cult, Divine Retribution, before they can harness the devastating power of Nemesis to reshape the world to their warped sense of righteousness.

  As Graham and Tilly plunge into Boston's darkest underbelly, they face more than just the echoes of their city's past. They must outwit cunning cultists, battle impossible monsters on the windswept beaches of Martha's Vineyard, and forge an unexpected alliance with the motley and formidable all-female biker gang inspired by the Queen of Monsters, the ‘Nemesisters.’ Every step drives them closer to the unthinkable, and asks the questions:

  How many must be sacrificed to save the world from the ever-watchful gaze of Nemesis?

  How much more will she demand when the world needs to be saved?

  NEMESIS

  Jeremy Robinson

  Older e-reader? Click here.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Pre-Game Note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Nemesis Art

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jeremy Robinson

  For Toby Jaffe,

  who took a chance on a little kaiju,

  and gave her the opportunity to become something…colossal.

  Author’s Pre-Game Note

  Before we jump into the madness, I wanted to answer a question I’m frequently asked about this release: Is Nemesis a continuation of the Nemesis Saga?

  The short answer is: no.

  The slightly longer answer is: Nemesis takes place in an alternate dimension of what my readers call the ‘RobinsonVerse.’ It’s been established in several previous books that all of my stories exist as a multiverse. Nemesis takes place in a parallel universe to the original Nemesis Saga, meaning there might be some familiar names and places, but the events of this book play out in a very different way, thirteen years later. Likewise, if you haven’t read the Nemesis Saga, no worries! It’s not required reading. Nemesis is a fully standalone novel. While reading the Nemesis Saga first might provide some ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ moments when things overlap, the opposite is also true, as the stories are parallels of each other. I hope that makes sense, and that you enjoy the kaiju chaos to come!

  —Jeremy Robinson

  1

  There’s a bug in my sink. Some kind of beetle thing that came in when I took the trash out last night. Now it’s lost in a strange new world, for which it was never meant. His struggle is compelling. I visualize his life. Put myself in the little guy’s pinprick mind. I find I’m drawn to a sun-like glow with such intensity that I leave my natural habitat, circle a glowing tit-shaped light fixture, and eventually spiral out of that frenzied orbit.

  I land beside layers of soggy crumbs, bits of old food cemented to the stainless-steel tub, and the slick remains of various peels. A growing pool of water expands from the sink’s clogged drain. I’m caught up in it.

  Wriggling around, I work my way toward the water’s edge, thwarted on occasion by an aged pea or a moldy raisin. Free and clear of liquid sludge, I scramble for higher ground, conscious only of what lies an inch ahead. I don’t see the vertical rise beyond. Nor the grizzled man watching me, coffee dripping from the hair over his lip. Isn’t even part of my world.

  There’s only wetness, panic, and the urge to run.

  I scramble forward and up, until gravity throws me back down. I’m unfazed and undeterred, little legs scrambling until I’m righted and moving forward again. Up the wall, and then back down. I’ll repeat this all day. Until I die. Until the light returns, urging me to unfurl my wings. Until some being beyond my comprehension decides to end my suffering. Through rescue or death. I have no concept of either. Because I’m insignificant. Living for a day. Maybe two.

  I blink out of my thoughts, human once more, staring down at my six-legged visitor, helpless against the sink. Really should figure out why it’s clogged, but the other side drains fine, so I’ll probably leave it until both aren’t working.

  “What should I do with you?” I ask the beetle, as he starts up the sink wall once more.

  Mercy, I think. Always mercy. Anything less would reveal a darkening. A hardening of the heart. And that is dangerous these days.

  Besides, this tiny creature hasn’t done anything to me, aside from keeping my mind off the bitter taste of my coffee and what lies ahead. My own personal stainless-steel wall. I climb it every day.

  Eventually it’ll kill me.

  This is what life has become.

  “All aboard,” I say, lowering my finger into the sink. For a moment, the insect appears dumbfounded by the appearance of my crusty old digit. Then it reaches out a tentative leg and tests the surface. Finding nothing of grave concern, it climbs on up, and holds still when I lift my hand. The beetle turns around as I walk through the kitchen and the dining room, perched atop my nail like it’s about to hold Simba out to the pride.

  Saw that movie a long time ago. With my daughter. Feels like it’s been just as long since I’ve seen her. Time is funny now, and it’s catching up with me.

  I’m still running the race, but I can feel a nipping at my heels.

  Almost time to bow out.

  “But not yet,” I tell the insect, opening the door to the early morning sun. “Not for either of us.”

  I flick the little guy free and watch him fly off. He makes it ten feet and is picked off by a dragonfly.

  “Life in a nutshell,” I say.

  “That supposed to be poetic?”

  I turn toward the driveway. “You’re early.”

  My new partner stands beside her car, wide awake, showered, dressed in fresh clothing. Really professional. Like she works for the DHS’s Fusion Center–Paranormal or something. I used to be like that, once upon a time, back when I transferred to the FC–P from the FBI. That was thirteen years ago. Feels like an eternity.

  Escorting a few hundred men and women to their deaths changes your perception of time and your outlook on life. My job-mandated therapist says I’m depressed.

  I say I’m just seeing the world for what it is—at the mercy of a god who never extends a finger to help. Just a hell of a lot of smiting.

  Granted, we’d all be out of a job if folks would just stop being assholes to each other. Then again, most normal people have done just that. Organized crime is a thing of the past. Crimes of passion are still sometimes an issue, but rape, murder, and all the nastiest shit people lean toward on a bad day—mostly things of the past.

  Still have a jumper every now and again—someone who wants to end their life quickly, and in style. They can cause a lot of problems because they’re hard to predict, but the real trouble, as always, comes from the crazies. Psychopaths. Serial killers. The kind of people who are barely human.

  But they’ve adapted, too. Finding places to hide where Nemesis can’t detect them.

  We find them. Always do. Because if we don’t…

  “You still haven’t changed the time on your alarm clock,” she says.

  I tug my phone from my pocket and give it a glance. “Well, look at that. I’m late.”

  “You forget what we’re doing today?”

  I sip my coffee and grimace. It’s god-awful. “I did not.”

  “You want to change first?” She looks me up and down like she’s some upt
own socialite and I’m a destitute vagabond loitering outside her favorite Tiffany & Co.

  “I do not.” I dump the coffee in the bush beside the staircase, take a deep breath, and have a looksee at the neighborhood. It’s upscale. Nice by anyone’s standards. Gated, too. Not really my style, but I bought it back in the day, hoping it would lure my family to come visit.

  Didn’t work. So, I let the place go to shit. Long grass. Unkempt shrubs. The neighbors sometimes grow impatient and send their boys over to tidy up, but they’re about as good at yard work as a fainting goat is at gymnastics. Inside is worse. At least no one can see that.

  As the soul, so goes the home.

  If that’s not a saying, it should be.

  It’s not until I reach the bottom step that I realize I’m not wearing any shoes. Going to need the shit-kickers today. With a sigh, I head back up and retrieve them—and the socks stuffed inside, left there since our last extraction. Doesn’t bother me. Whatever grew on them in the time since is long dead by now.

  I carry my boots to my partner’s car. It’s a little sporty thing. Not my style. Moves like lightning, though.

  I open the door to a pristine leather seat. Blue like the exterior. Reminds me that the kid has money. And a lot of it. Not sure why she does this job. Could be spending her days on a tropical beach, sipping cocktails, and getting back-rubbed by a handsome hairless man named Esteban. Instead, she’s moving the seat back for a vagrant with an attitude, a house, and a badge.

  “There you go,” she says, patting the seat.

  “Doesn’t make it much easier,” I grumble, lowering myself nearly to the ground to slide inside. At least the air conditioning works. I thought to upgrade my house. Never considered replacing the Mustang. Some things just stand the test of time…even if they’re not currently running.

  I let out a sigh and settle in. “Nothing like a little car to make you feel small.”

  “The car makes you feel small?” she asks. “Nemesis does that for the rest of us. She really doesn’t bother you anymore?”

  “How about this?” I close my eyes. “You shush and drive.”

  “Not until you buckle up.”

  I flip her off.

  “Graham…”

  “You know I prefer Spider.”

  “First, extraction specialists are referred to by their last names. Second, I don’t believe for a second that your real name is ‘Spider.’”

  I shrug, mostly because I don’t give a rip what she thinks. “It’s a name.”

  She raises an eyebrow, which is essentially a challenge to a duel of wits.

  I tick off a finger with each name. “Spider Robinson. A three-time Hugo award-winning science fiction author.” I clear my throat. “Spider-Man. Spider-Ham. Spider-Stacy. Spider—”

  “Those are fictional code names,” she says, “and so is yours. Is it because you catch people? Because you lay out a web for them to creep into, and then pounce and wrap them up?”

  “Huh,” I say, giving her sarcasm right back. “Never thought of it like that.”

  She slugs my shoulder.

  “My mother liked spiders,” I say. “Strange woman. I can’t stand them.”

  “Neither can I,” she says, but she puts the car in reverse, despite my lack of seatbelt. Good choice. She knows by now that I’m more stubborn than skid marks on a flatulent man’s Fruit of the Looms. Dying in a car crash is probably one of the best ways I could die today. Because things are going to get really nasty, really fast. And she’ll learn—the hard way—that sometimes wearing your Sunday best to work is a bad idea.

  She puts the car in Drive and floors it. Likes to pretend that safety is important, but she drives like the Road Runner after a coffee enema. One of her redeeming qualities.

  I lean back into the seat, turn her way, and ask, “What kind of a name is Maigo, anyway?”

  2

  I hold my badge out the window, same as Maigo does in the driver’s seat. The two plain-clothes officers, loitering casually on either side of the street, approach the vehicle like we’re about to do a drug deal.

  “Extraction,” I say.

  In the moment it takes the officer to read the words ‘Nemesis Special Operations’ on my badge and hear why I’m gracing him with my presence—extraction—I’ve learned everything I need to know about him.

  He’s not here because he wants to be, but that’s easy. No one wants to come face to face with an NSO agent. Because it means your time might be up. That you might be hogtied and carted off to face judgment and execution at the hands of the most merciless son of a bitch to ever set foot on the planet—including Lucifer, if you believe in such things.

  Despite his nervous jitters and the way he diverts his eyes away from me, the officer likes his job. Most of the time he just sits around, enjoying the abject lack of crime, getting fat on whatever old-school cops get fat on these days, and counting his weeks until he can collect on his pension. He’ll go home tonight, tell his wife and kids about his encounter with me, enjoy a second helping of lasagna, and watch an Infinite Timeline movie or two. Then he’ll settle back into his routine of nothingness for the next few years until another nutjob surfaces, beckoning the ‘requiter of sins’—and me.

  But it won’t be me in a few years.

  It’ll be Maigo, or whichever poor schmuck takes her place. Most people wash out of the NSO in the first year. Maigo’s been with me for two months. This is her first extraction. Kid’s top of her class. A real overachiever. Ace with a gun. Knows how to subdue a perp without killing them. But all that training? All the crime scene videos? None of it prepares you for the first time you walk into a madman’s den.

  I feel bad for her, proudly flashing her badge to the other officer, excited to do her part in keeping the world safe from a god by offering up the worst of us as a sacrifice.

  It’s not really that simple. Nemesis would take these people one way or the other. And when that happens, everything between the creature and her target is fair game. We lost a lot of people and some great cities—Boston was the first—before we figured it all out. I was around back then, eager to help, not as young, but just as naïve as Maigo.

  “You’re free to go, sir,” the officer tells me, backing away, eyes to the pavement.

  “I know,” I say, followed by, “Hey, is it nice?”

  The man staggers to a stop, just shy of the curb he was about to trip over. Nearly sprawls to the ground anyway. “W-what?”

  “The neighborhood? The house? They nice?”

  He looks up toward the hill we’re about to drive up. “Uh, yeah. Big. Has a well. Old, but renovated.”

  I nod. “I know the type. Thanks.” I point to the curb behind him. “And watch the god damned curb.”

  The officer looks back and nearly trips over the curb again anyway. “Shit!” He stumbles up onto the sidewalk and offers a shy, “Th-thanks,” before moseying off on his way.

  Our approach is supposed to be subtle. Designed to not trigger local panic. We go in, we get out. And if we do it right, the neighbors are never the wiser. There are undercover officers like him covering every street, intersection, and alleyway for a half mile out in every direction. On the off chance that the NSO Extraction team fails to subdue the target, we can’t risk an escape.

  It happened just once, in Iran, of all places.

  The line of destruction between the Persian Gulf and Tehran can be seen from space, and the city is still being rebuilt. All for one man, who had a penchant for fashioning necklaces—with women’s teeth. Thousands died. If Iran’s southern coastline were more densely populated, and if Tehran hadn’t had a few hours to evacuate, the death toll would have been higher.

  Since then, we’ve had a dragnet of police standing by at each extraction, just in case another asshole wriggles off the hook. Haven’t needed them yet.

  “Thanks,” Maigo says, as both windows roll up.

  We drive ahead and turn left, onto a street leading up a hill. It’s a picturesque New England neighborhood. Big old houses that have been repainted and kept up, surrounded by trees that are even older. If we don’t get the job done, by this time tomorrow all that’ll remain will be rubble and ash.