Then he swiveled and conjured another blast on the now-defenseless Kong.
Kong did the only thing he could do—he dodged. For all of his vast bulk, the simian Titan was incredibly nimble. He swung through the buildings as he might a jungle, staying just ahead of the deadly beam as it sliced through buildings like butter. He could only stay ahead for so long, though, and eventually the blue ray struck him in the back. He screeched, piling into another building, beating the fire off his back. He staggered back to his feet, but Godzilla wasn’t done yet; he tore the fierce blue beam of energy through the city, aiming to cut Kong in half. Kong kept running, ducking, sidestepping, evading the terrible weapon, finally leaping to the top of the tallest building he saw.
Godzilla’s breath sliced through the bottom, so it toppled, with Kong still clinging to it.
TWENTY
From the Notebook of Dr. Ishiro Serizawa
A Jewish legend speaks of Behemoth and Leviathan – the first, a terrible monster of the land, the second a massive creature of the water. It is said that one day Leviathan will come forth, and even the weapons of the angels will be of no use against him. But then Behemoth will arrive to fight Leviathan. They will inflict mortal wounds on one another, and both will die. Similar stories are recorded in our oldest texts, the clay tablets from the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, but they can be found scattered about the entire globe. In such stories, gods and monsters are often indistinguishable.
Hong Kong
The HEAV was bucking Nathan’s direction, trying to slam them into the wall of the increasingly unstable tunnel. And his instruments, if he was reading them correctly, told him the worst was yet to come.
“We’re about to breach the veil,” he warned his passengers. He pushed the engines as far as they would go, and again they hit the strange space–time distortion, and HEAV turned into a bullet firing through the roughest musket in the world.
An eternity passed. No time passed at all. And suddenly they were rocketing from the passage into a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes; one shape in particular loomed large…
They were on a collision course with Kong, who was in midair.
They all screamed in unison as Nathan yanked back on the stick. He avoided the giant ape by a hairsbreadth, wondering what the hell was going on, when in his peripheral vision he caught sight of a beam of blue energy spearing through the air, and he was flying through clouds of shattered glass and concrete. Out of the frying pan and into … a much bigger atomic frying pan. He put the craft into a climb, desperately trying to get the away from the warring Titans. He avoided the energy beam by a matter of feet and had one very up-close-and-personal view of Godzilla’s face before whipping past him into the sky above Hong Kong.
* * *
As Nathan fought for control and the craft gyred and ascended, Ilene couldn’t tear her gaze from Kong, Godzilla, and the destruction of Hong Kong. Kong was running, leaping, climbing, swinging from skyscrapers, avoiding Godzilla’s energy bolt with agility that was hard to credit to a creature so large, without seeing it first-hand. At first, she didn’t understand his goal, but then she saw his axe, buried in the side of a building. He reached it, pulled it out, and raised it high to attack Godzilla, who was still a considerable distance away. Kong took a short run and leapt, the axe cocked over his head.
A blue beam shot from Godzilla’s mouth, but Kong, sailing in a long arc through the air, blocked the ray with his glowing blade. And it worked.
But that would be the point, wouldn’t it? Godzilla’s energy beam made him almost invincible. Unless you had something to counter it. Like one of the very fins that charged and channeled the energy. After all, Kong had found it stuck in the skeleton of something like Godzilla.
As the HEAV started to level out, she saw Kong finish his arc, swinging the axe down to meet Godzilla’s gaping maw.
Then everything turned blue-white as a sphere of energy expanded out from the two Titans, hurling them in opposite directions and leveling everything in its radius. She watched, horrified, as the explosion raced toward them. Nathan gasped, trying to force the HEAV to somehow go faster.
The edge of the shockwaves reached them, buffeting them hard. But when it was over, they were still intact.
Below, she saw Kong pulling himself up from the rubble.
“Looks like round two goes to Kong,” Nathan said.
Ilene let her breath out and took another clean breath in, and saw the sun was rising from the South China Sea.
* * *
“Guy definitely has a flair for techno,” Bernie murmured, as the guards pushed them into the room.
Madison knew what he meant. If the Skull Room was the nerve center, the launch pad, this place was mission control—but as designed by a nightclub architect. Everything had a neon cast to it; there was even strip-lighting buried in the translucent floor. A huge observation window formed most of one wall, and the others were covered in panels displaying various data sets, including the energy upload she’d seen inside the skull. Various workstations faced away from the window, maybe to keep the techs from being distracted by the carnage below, since Madison was certain they were now overlooking the arena.
A man turned from the picture window to watch them
