I’m the only one left, Jake thought. The whole family is gone now except for me. He stepped up to Mako’s memorial screen and addressed her. “I’ll hit ’em back for you, Mako.”
Then he taped a photograph to the edge of the screen. It showed Stacker, improbably smiling, his arms draped around Jake and Mako when they were… Jake couldn’t remember exactly. Young, anyway. Before Jake and his father had really started to butt heads. Before everything had gone wrong.
Now it was too late to ever set any of it right.
12
PPDC SECRETARY GENERAL MORI KILLED IN ROGUE JAEGER ATTACK
WIRE SERVICE REPORTS
Among the dead in today’s rogue Jaeger assault on the meeting of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps Council was the PPDC Secretary General Mako Mori. Mori was en route to the meeting when her helicopter was downed by a missile from the rogue Jaeger, which has already acquired the moniker Obsidian Fury.
The PPDC did not immediately confirm Mori’s death despite multiple sources corroborating the initial report.
Before becoming Secretary General, Mori was a Ranger who copiloted Gipsy Danger’s final mission to close the Breach in 2025. Both she and Raleigh Becket, the other Ranger on that mission, survived, though Becket would later succumb to a rare cancer. Mori’s adoptive father, PPDC Marshal Stacker Pentecost, died during the mission. Her career as a Ranger was nearly ended before it began, due to Pentecost’s opposition, but she persevered and rose to the top of the Corps before moving into her Council role.
She is survived by her brother, Jake Pentecost, formerly a PPDC Cadet who was last seen in the slums of Santa Monica, California. Attempts to locate him have been unsuccessful.
Someone was yelling behind one of the doors just down the hall, the sound muffled but unmistakably angry. Jake walked in that direction, remembering that cadet Drift training used to be located in this wing… and sure enough, the noise was coming from a door labeled DRIFT TRAINING – CADET LEVEL 1. What they used to call “Drifting for Dummies”. More yelling came from inside.
Jake walked in and saw Amara sitting at a training rig. A computer voice said, “Neural connection failed.” Amara threw a punch at a holo screen representing her Drift pattern, her fist passing through it as she noticed Jake. She dropped her hand and looked embarrassed, which made Jake feel embarrassed. Then after a prolonged pause Amara said, “So I’m not great with feelings, but sorry about your sister. Half-sister…?”
“Her parents died in the Onibaba attack,” Jake said. “My dad took her in. She was my sister. My family.”
Amara wasn’t sure how to handle the emotional weight of what Jake was dropping on her. So she went with her tried-and-true strategy, making a joke out of it. “Better not let Ranger Lambert see you out of uniform. He’ll take the stick out of his butt and beat you with it.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “Think I’m safe. It’s wedged in there pretty tight.”
Coming closer, Jake checked out the Drift rig Amara had been beating on. He couldn’t help but grin when he saw that one side was wired to a tank containing a human brain, suspended in a tank of synthetic cerebrospinal fluid. On the base of the tank was a plaque Jake knew by heart. THIS IS SARAH. SHE DONATED HER MIND SO THAT YOU COULD TRAIN. TELL ME HER FAVORITE CANDY BAR.
“They’re still using Sarah, huh?” Jake remembered the hours he’d spent learning to Drift with her. It almost made him feel sentimental.
“I can’t get her to Drift with me,” Amara said, her voice part growl and part whine. “The other cadets have been training forever. I hate feeling like the slow kid.”
“You gotta relax or you’re just grinding gears,” Jake said. It was a lesson he’d learned again that day—and that thought started to lift his mood. He could maybe do some good here, on a day that had been so terrible so far.
Leaning in, he punched a series of holo commands. Sarah retracted and a regular Drift rig appeared to take her place.
“Relax,” Amara said, back to her normal sardonic self. “Got it, coach.”
“Don’t call me coach,” Jake said.
“Sensei?”
Jake slid the practice helmet on. “Just clear your mind. Can’t connect if you’re running your mouth. You ready?”
Nervous but trying not to show it, Amara gave him a double thumbs-up.
“Let’s see if we’re Drift-compatible.” Jake tapped in a fresh series of commands. The Drift rigs connected, and Jake felt the psychic rush of entering a Drift with another human mind. Amara felt it too, more powerfully than Jake did because she was so new to the experience. She gasped out loud and the two of them fell into the melding inter-cognitive non-space of the Drift, their memories jumbling and pouring over each other—
—Amara as a young girl, chasing her brother across their back yard. They’re laughing, and as they pass her parents they smile and lean into each other a little, feeling the simple joy of happy children and a life together—
—Amara on her bicycle, a birthday gift. She’s just been to the store with her mother and as a reward for good behavior she got noisemakers to put on the spokes. She pedals faster and faster, as the slapping sound of the noisemakers becomes a whir—
—Amara in the garage with her father. A car engine, partially disassembled, hangs from a block and tackle. He is showing her how the pistons work in the cylinders. On a workbench next to the block and tackle, the engine’s head sits drying after they’ve just cleaned it. Once it’s dry they’ll set the head gasket and put it back on, and after that they’re going to drop it into a car—
—Jake, eight years old, in his father’s study. Stacker is at the Shatterdome inspecting the Jaegers. Jake picks up different things on his father’s desk: a pen, a folder containing cross-section blueprints of machine parts
