Kingdom of Monsters by John Schneider (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

legal/bureaucratical retribution that currently barked at her own heels?

Which begged the question, why send the e-mail at all?

Perhaps that was supposed to protect her.

Or was it that he believed he simply had to take the risk?

Because the elephant in the room was the two-foot lizard that was apparently a lot smarter than his keepers believed.

At least one of the stories she'd found had mentioned a talking lizard – nothing but a headline, and when she searched the story, she found it gone.

Kate was becoming nervous.

She couldn't put her finger on it, but she felt distinctly uneasy, the way animals are supposed to get edgy before an earthquake or some natural disaster.

Not just a military brat, but a General's daughter, Kate was hard-headed.  She didn't believe in premonitions, or fortune-telling.

But after meeting Shanna, she certainly believed she could pick up on bad vibes.

Kate had a little secret – something she'd been holding as an ace-in-the-hole, her leverage with any prosecutors the government might send her way – and once she was legally in the clear, she could turn her attention to wrangling Maverick and Cameron out of limbo.

She pulled a small disc from her purse – the video disc she'd pulled from Cameron's camcorder after Hinkle's little walk-through of his lab – up to and including the giant savage rabbit with the glowing green eyes.

Their Navy ship had taken three days to arrive in New York.  Kate had it in her possession the whole time.  After already being in custody, and having just been pulled out of a crashed sea-plane, no one even thought to search her.

She'd had it stashed behind her compact-mirror, just in case.

It was supposed to be her get-out-of-jail-free card.

If she did what she was thinking of doing with it now, it would be go-to-jail.

It would also effectively destroy any lingering relationship she had with her father.

Kate plugged the disc into her computer.

On her e-mail contact-list alone, she had every major media outlet in the world.

That was the thing about the Internet – the worldwide web – once it was out there, you couldn't get it back.

In a way, it was amazing there were still secrets.  It just showed how dark parts of the world could be.

Kate was still not certain it had been Nolan Hinkle who sent that e-mail video.  Or why.

She didn't believe in premonitions.  But she had a world-class case of the creeps.

Kate wondered if Hinkle had felt those same creeps.

She tapped her keyboard, bringing her screen to life.

As she did so, she noticed she had a message.

A blinking picture of Princess Leia, floating in a hologram.

She tapped it, and the picture spoke.

“Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi.  You're my only hope.”

Then the image blurred to that of Nolan Hinkle standing in his study.

On screen, the image started speaking, but the voice-over continued to be Princess Leia's heart-felt plea, “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi.”

And then, almost right in her ear, the words finished.

“You're my only hope.”

Kate jumped from her chair with a screech, nearly knocking over her desk as she turned to where a two-foot lizard was standing on her bookcase.

A lizard with big claws.

Otto hissed.

There was a rustling patter and suddenly it was joined by two others.

Kate backed up against her desk.  She looked around for something to get in her hands, but she was cornered.

“Help me, Obi Wan,” the little lizards said in chorus.

Kate screamed as they came for her.

Chapter 31

Shanna finally got to see New York.

When it went south on Monster Island, Rhodes had taken steps for both security and science.

One of those steps was a giant gorilla named Congo.

Another was a young man named Cameron, who Shanna had only just met – who had invaded her privacy on her island, and along with his friend, Maverick, now faced some very serious charges.

Kate was fine.  Shanna had a feeling she would be.

But Cameron and Maverick currently didn't even exist, sequestered at a secret facility, the Area 51 guys called the 'east-coast shop' – a deceptively tame-looking warehouse lot off the south beach of Brooklyn.

Congo was there too – the only facility large enough to hold him while the chemical's effect ran its course.

Three weeks in and he appeared nearly at full-growth.

He was chained and heavily sedated.

Shanna herself was given a more gilded cage.  A workshop in Manhattan – the East Coast shop's downtown office, not far from the Empire State.

Rhodes had done his best to duplicate her lab from the island, and to his credit, were it not for the armed guards at her door, the illusion might have held.

Rhodes had also re-established links to her Area 51-contacts.

Primary among them, Dr. Shriver, who had taken over the clandestine site, was extremely interested in Hinkle's work on the Food of the Gods.

Shriver had been Rhodes' primary adviser in regards to Nolan Hinkle's research, particularly now, in the absence of Hinkle himself.

At least, until he was comfortable with who Shanna was.

Shanna was just actually learning that herself.

For the first time in her entire life, she was around people.  And not just people, but millions of people, all around her.

She still couldn't walk among them, but she could see them from her window.

In a way, it was intimidating, and a small, frightened part of her was actually glad for the lock on her door, giving her an excuse to stay in her own space and hide.

But she could feel them.

And even the handful of uniformed officers, the crew of sailors on the boat, or the odd assistant Shriver sent over – all of it still represented the most contact with her own species Shanna had experienced in her entire life.

Ironic that she actually felt more alone than she ever had before.

Her father was gone.  Her whole island home was gone – not just left-behind, but gone.  And in a city of millions, just on the other side of a window, the people around her were either virtual or armed keepers.

Shanna had not grown up with the human touch, and as such, had never been