Bernie had his notebook out and was scribbling like mad. Madison understood the train. But the rest of it, what was actually going on here…
She heard footsteps approaching.
“Someone’s coming,” she said.
They were close to one of the maglev cars now; the three of them ducked in to hide.
When the footsteps faded, Madison peered out the train window opposite to the door they had come in. Outside, Apex workers with flashlights were loading something into another train from huge pallets; giant egg-shaped objects with fetus-like shadows floating inside.
“Oh, my God,” Madison said. Because she knew what they were. She had never seen one in person, but in her time with her mother she’d learned plenty about them.
“They look like eggs,” Josh said.
“Skullcrawlers,” she said. Massive semi-reptilian monsters from Skull Island, these were the chief antagonists of the island’s alpha, Kong. Nasty, terrible things by all accounts. “What’s Apex doing with Skullcrawlers?”
“Um … Madison?” Josh said.
She turned to find out what he wanted, and then she saw. The car they were in was already packed with Skullcrawler eggs.
“Oh, crap,” she said.
“Yes,” Bernie said. “I think maybe it’s time we leave. I’ve got a podcast to record, and—”
He was cut short by the metallic sound of the door they had come though gliding shut.
“What was that?” Bernie asked.
The whole car jolted and then started to lift up.
“Uh, guys?” Josh said. “I think we’re moving.”
“No kidding,” Madison said.
They were being lifted up by a crane, in fact. But as far as she could tell, looking down, still no one had noticed them. They had just become unwitting additions to a shipment of Titan eggs headed—someplace.
Josh and Bernie were using brute force trying to get the door to open but having no luck. Josh did finally manage to pop a panel open that had a screen inside with routing information.
“Oh,” he said.
“What?”
“It says we’re heading to Apex headquarters—Hong Kong.”
Bernie seemed to relax. He even smiled. “Hong Kong,” he said. “That means we’re going to get some answers.”
The doors opened, revealing the tunnel again. The crane settled them in, and they bumped forward until the doors closed behind them. The car began to rise up into the air. Madison flicked her eyes nervously around the Skullcrawler eggs that took up most of their space. She felt as if the walls of the pod had shrunk to fit her skin, making it hard to breathe. What if the eggs sensed food and hatched early?
“I hope that these guys don’t mind that we’re tagging along,” she said.
“What happens if they hatch? Do they, you know, get on your face?”
Madison shook her head. “Hatchlings are fully independent at birth. Just smaller versions of the adults.”
“Okay,” Josh sighed.
“They’re born starving,” Madison said. “They will just straight-up eat us.”
Josh stared at the nearest egg. “No, please,” he said.
A few yards down the tunnel, the car took off like a rocket. She glanced back at Josh, at the fear on his face, and she wanted to tell him that it was okay, she was scared, too. But knowing Josh, that would have the wrong effect, give him license to panic. As long as he thought she was okay, he would try to hold it together, if for no other reason so she couldn’t make fun of him later.
Instead, Madison tried to piece together exactly what was happening. Hong Kong? That meant the tunnel they were in ran all the way beneath southern North America and then the entirety of the Pacific Ocean. That was one hell of a tunnel. And Apex had built it all without anyone knowing about it, with maglev technology? And if there was one tunnel like this, how many more were there? How many places could Apex ship massive cargoes of Titan eggs or whatever without the risk of being noticed?
Even some of Bernie’s crazier conspiracy theories were starting to sound more reasonable. This was going to be some ride.
“Here we go,” she said.
Antarctica
“Yeah, whatever,” Sergeant “Class” Zivkovic said, flipping off the handset.
“What’s up, Sarge?” Ryan asked, wiping frost off his gloves.
“Just Eskibel out on the point, yanking our chains again,” Class said.
“What this time?” Ryan wanted to know. “Another man-eating penguin?”
“Something like that.” He looked past Ryan at Martin, who was clicking his rosary beads again.
“Martin,” he said. “You okay?”
“I don’t like this place, Sarge,” Martin said. “All those people, just straight up murdered at the outpost. You know they laid out there almost a year before anybody ever came and got ’em?”
“It’s a deep freeze here, Martin,” Class said. “I’m sure the bodies kept just fine.”
“Yeah, their bodies,” Martin said. “But…” He trailed off.
“You think there are ghosts here, Martin?”
Martin looked stricken. “Sarge, you know I do,” he said. “People have souls. When we die, sometimes they go on. Sometimes they don’t get far at all. I feel like some of these are hanging around, y’know?”
Class sighed and nodded.
Personally, he didn’t believe in ghosts, but it had been a bad business, the massacre at Monarch Outpost 32. A bunch of mercenaries lead by an ecoterrorist and a rogue Monarch scientist had engineered it and blasted the frozen Titan Ghidorah out of its icy tomb. After that, of course, all hell
