“Which is?” Josh asked.
“Mind-to-mind connection,” Bernie said. “The two skulls are still in contact. I think that’s how they control the…” He looked at Josh and sighed. “Mechagodzilla.”
With a jolt, Madison realized someone else was in the room. A man, seated in a chair inside the skull, wearing a cap with hundreds of wires and cables connected to it, running out into the machines and the skull itself.
“It’s the pilot,” Madison breathed.
Bernie peered in, then hid once more behind the skull.
“He’s in a trance,” Bernie said. “Psionic uplink. It follows his will. Oh, Apex, what have you done?”
As if in response, the man shifted a little. Bernie moved back, waving them back, too.
“Hide!” he whispered, as the pilot reached to remove the helmet.
With no time to reach the door, they did the only thing they could; they ducked underneath the skull, scooching toward the middle.
Monarch Command and Control, Hong Kong
“This is the day we feared,” the director said, as Mark rushed from the helipad into the command and control. “I’ve given the order, Doctor. The city is being evacuated.”
“Where are Apex’s defenses?” Mark asked.
“They’re not responding,” Guillerman said.
“Maybe we were wrong,” Mark said. But he didn’t finish. What was there to say? The monster was here.
Mark watched, stone-faced, as Godzilla emerged from the sea. The monitors were full of the evacuation, some of it orderly, much of it characterized by the screams and hysteria that were inevitable when a three-hundred-foot-tall lizard came wading up to your metropolis. Fortunately, Hong Kong, like most major cities, had spent the past three years building secure bunkers just in case something like this were to happen again. Unfortunately, Mark knew that no shelter built by human hands could withstand the full force of Godzilla’s attack. Their best hope was that they were right, that Godzilla was headed straight for the Apex building and would ignore everything that wasn’t between him and it.
For Mark’s part, he felt a sort of grim déjà vu.
He had spent years hating Godzilla, blaming him for the death of his son, the dissolution of his marriage and his family. But in the end, he had come to believe he was wrong, that Godzilla was on the side of humanity, that his hatred and anger were misplaced. And three years ago, he had felt vindicated. Even now it was hard to imagine how Ghidorah could have been defeated without the aid of Godzilla.
But now, maybe because of something Apex was doing or maybe just because, Godzilla had turned on them. That meant they had to do whatever it took to stop him.
Of course, he didn’t know what that might be. The only thing that had been able to stop Ghidorah was Godzilla, and Godzilla had proved pretty definitely that there was no other Titan that could challenge him, most recently by making an example of Kong. So what was their plan?
Maybe Simmons had something up his sleeve. If so, Mark hoped whatever it was wouldn’t be as destructive as Godzilla already was.
“Landfall,” one of the techs said.
Mark nodded, watching the familiar silhouette advance into the city, the monitors capturing him from various angles.
Then, the Titan suddenly stopped, jerking as if something invisible had arrested him. He screeched and then began whirling around, his tail cutting through buildings. The entire city shook, and in the harbor, boats, swamped by miniature tsunamis, began to sink.
What the hell was he doing? Mark wondered. More than anything, it reminded him of a Titan’s reaction to the ORCA, or the call of another Titan. If the call was centered on him.
He’s confused, Mark thought. But what…?
Then Godzilla stopped and faced toward the earth. Blue light crept up his dorsal fins, and then a cerulean bolt of energy blasted from his mouth, tearing into the asphalt and concrete at his feet, and then deeper, into the very stone the city was built upon. Mark felt the earth shuddering through the concrete of the bunker and the mountain it was embedded in.
He had seen Godzilla do this before. For seconds, for tens of seconds maybe, and always directed at an enemy.
But now his enemy seemed to be the Earth itself, and he did not stop. He kept going, drilling toward the core of the planet.
Kong Temple
Ilene and Jia wandered around Kong’s temple, and found more ancient art lurking in the shadows; like the building itself, Ilene suspected much of the painting and sculpture had been done by the Kongs themselves. Dozens more handprints graced the walls, all huge, but still of different sizes, reflecting different members of the race—different sexes and ages. They also found hundreds of smaller, human-sized prints, virtually invisible until you went looking for them, lost in the cavernous space. Most of the small prints were low, near the floor, but once they started looking for them, they saw some were much higher, and far from any ledge in the stone that might have given a human purchase.
Kongs lifted them up, Jia said. Ilene knew the girl was speculating, but it made sense, especially when she thought about the relationship between Kong and Jia.
They found more images of warfare, too, one fairly spectacular. It depicted a Kong and a Godzilla-like creature grappling. Below the Titans were smaller figures, human. And not just human; she was sure from the depictions, and some she had seen before, that they were Iwi. Jia’s people.
Jia had known it before she had. The girl was shaking with emotion, and Ilene gathered her in and held her tightly.
Family, the girl signed. Family.
There were more painting and carvings, with the two Titan species clashing in a variety of poses and situations; but in none of them did Ilene see a figure similar to Godzilla missing a dorsal fin. That seemed unique to the floor mosaic, and so she was eventually drawn back to that, wondering what it could mean. Kong continued to sit in his throne, examining his new toy now and
