EIGHTEEN
Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee.
Job 40:15
Apex Facility, Hong Kong
Shortly after the shower of Skullcrawler guts covered their hideout, the arena shut down and the lights went out. Mechagodzilla, however, did not withdraw into the floor, but remained where it was, inert now, slumped over, all the fire gone out of its eyes.
“This is why Godzilla attacked the Apex facility,” Madison said. “They’re trying to replace him.”
“Yes,” Bernie said. “Yes. The eye I saw. That’s it up there, on the robo-Godzilla.”
“Mechagodzilla,” Josh corrected him.
“Really?” Bernie said.
“Bernie,” Madison said, “I think you have to let that one go. And I need you to focus. What now?”
“Now?” Bernie said. “Now?”
“I think it’s time to go,” Madison said.
“Yes,” Bernie said. “Yes, I think that’s entirely appropriate.”
Madison turned the valves, cracked the hatch slightly, and looked out.
“Coast is clear,” she said. “Come on.”
“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” Bernie said.
Madison glanced up at the observation balconies overlooking the arena. Whoever had been controlling the mechanical Titan must be up there someplace, along with an explanation. It wasn’t enough to know that Godzilla hadn’t just gone rogue for no reason; she needed to be able to prove it.
They climbed out of the bunker, trying to avoid the Skullcrawler guts as best they could.
“That’s probably an exit down there,” Madison said. “Let’s check it out.”
“Yeah,” Bernie said, stepping over some sort of organ. “I really, really hate this room.”
The scale of the place had fooled her; what she thought was an exit looked more like a freight elevator. The door was closed, and the keypad next to it suggested getting on was not going to be easy.
“You’re a hacker, right?” Bernie said to Josh. “You think you can open that?”
“Maybe,” Josh said. “Or we could take the stairs.” He pointed to a smaller door.
Madison pulled on the handle, and it opened easily. Inside, stairs led both up and down.
“Huh,” Bernie said. He looked around. “You see another door?” he asked. “Maybe one that just says ‘out’?”
“What are you talking about?” Madison said. “It’s here. It’s all here, like you said. All of the answers.”
“Yeah?” Bernie said. “Stealing memos and shipping manifests is one thing. All this…” He pointed at the resting Mechagodzilla. “That’s another. Look, you may be used to almost being eaten by these things. I am not. I am a journalist, a truth seeker. I am not a Titan entrée.”
“Not an entrée,” Josh said. “Not even an appetizer, really. More an amuse bouche.”
He shrank back a little as Bernie leaned over him.
“What?” Josh said. “I like food television.”
“Do what you want,” Madison said. “I’m going this way.” She hesitated for just a moment. Did they want to go down? That’s where the big mechanical Titan had come up from. But while it might have been built down there, her strong feeling was that whoever was controlling it was up.
The first five landings with doors didn’t look promising, just darkened access corridors that seemed to service the building’s infrastructure. Eventually, though, they did come to a more promising exit. She was just starting to push the door open when she heard footfalls outside. She eased the door shut and they all flattened against the walls as the steps grew closer and then began to recede. She pressed the door open and peered out just in time to see a pair of armed guards turn a corner.
“Okay,” she said. She slipped through the door with Josh and Bernie behind her, padding down the corridor, glancing through the doorways as they passed them. She felt as if she was going the right way—toward the viewing areas above the arena—but she couldn’t be sure. The place was like a maze, and they might have gotten turned around.
They reached a dead end, but there was another door and more stairs. They went up them to the next level, where they entered another corridor.
Madison looked up and down it and started to the left.
“Hang on,” Bernie said. “I think—”
He was cut off by more footfalls, and a couple of voices chattering in the distance. Madison pushed open the nearest door and they all ducked in, waiting for the guards to pass. When they finally did, Madison breathed a sigh of relief and cracked the door.
Bernie got ahead of her. “Hey guys,” he said. “The exit is this way.”
“Madison!” Josh said, from behind them.
She turned to look and so did Bernie.
They hadn’t stepped into just any room. They had stepped into a really weird room.
To begin with it was a sort of technological nightmare, a mad scientist’s playground. A mass of computers and machinery connected by freeways of electricity, complete with blinking lights and glowing components and a generally neon feel. But in the center of it all was something decidedly non-technological, at least on the surface; an immense horned skull, suspended by wires and fiber-optics and tubes of some kind of goo and who knew what else.
Even without the scales and skin, Madison had no doubt what it was. She had been too up close and personal with its former owner to ever forget.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“What?” Bernie gasped.
“A Titan skull?” Josh said.
“No, no,” Bernie said. “Not just any Titan skull. That’s Monster Zero.”
“Ghidorah,” Madison said.
Bernie seemed to have forgotten he was trying to flee the scene. He approached the skull almost reverently. “They hardwired its DNA,” Bernie said. “Self-generating neuro-pathways capable of intuitive learning…”
“Uh,” Josh said. “So, like—I’m smart, but I’m in high school?”
“It’s a living supercomputer,” Bernie clarified.
Bernie drew even nearer and ran his fingers over the skull, the wire embedded in it like filigree.
“It had three heads,” Bernie said. “Its necks were so long that it communicated telepathically. There’s one here—there’s another one inside
