by Greg Keyes
“She’s right here with me.”
Madison stepped into the frame.
“Dad?” she said. “Dad, are you okay?”
The rush of relief was dizzying.
“Madison – you all right, hon?”
“Dad – I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Mark said.
“She’s fine, Mark,” Emma said. “Trust me.”
Trust you? he thought. But he held his tongue. He had to know what she was going to say, and if he went at her the way he wanted to, that might not happen.
Emma nodded. She nudged Maddie. His daughter paused, still looking at him. Then she moved out of sight.
Colonel Foster had no qualms about calling Emma out.
“Trust is a little hard to come by, Dr. Russell,” she said, “especially after what you pulled.”
“I know,” Emma replied. “And I can only imagine what you’re all thinking. But if there were any other way to do this, I would.”
Mark listened to his ex-wife with a growing sense of dread.
“Do what, Emma?” Mark demanded.
He could tell she was making an effort to stay calm. This wasn’t easy for her.
It shouldn’t be. She had blood on her hands. But he knew her too well. Underneath whatever remorse she felt, he sensed absolute conviction.
“I’m saving the world,” she said.
“By releasing those things?” he shot back. “That doesn’t make sense!”
“As impossible as it seems,” she said, “it does. Hear me out, Mark. After we lost Andrew, I swore his death would not be in vain. That I would find an answer. A solution to why the Titans were rising. But as I dug deeper, I realized that they were here for a reason and that despite all the years that we spent trying to stop them, we never dared to confront the truth.”
“What truth?”
“Humans have been the dominant species for thousands of years and look what’s happened…”
Video appeared on the screen. Scenes of warfare, starvation, deforestation, oil spills played out as she spoke.
“…overpopulation, pollution, war. The mass extinction we feared has already begun. And we are the cause. We are the infection. But like all living organisms, the Earth unleashed a fever to fight this infection. Its original and rightful rulers, the Titans.”
The video cut to an insectile MUTO destroying Las Vegas, Godzilla on Bikini Atoll, Kong on Skull Island, a MUTO breaking out of confinement at the Janjira nuclear plant in Japan.
“They are part of the Earth’s natural defense system. A way to protect the planet. To maintain its balance. But if governments are allowed to contain them, destroy them, or use them for war, the human infection will only continue to spread. And within our lifetime, our planet will perish, and so will we. Unless we restore balance.”
“And what’s going to be left if you do this?” Stanton said. “A dead, charred world overrun by monsters?”
“No, Dr. Stanton, the exact opposite.”
More video. A forest, shown growing by time-lapse photography, a volcano, the ruins of San Francisco and Las Vegas overrun by plant life.
“Just like how a forest fire replenishes the soil, or a volcano creates new land, we have seen signs that these creatures will do the same: San Francisco. Las Vegas. Wherever the Titans go, life follows – triggered by their radiation. They are the only thing that can reverse the destruction that we started. They are the only guarantee that life will carry on. But for that to happen, we must set them free.”
“You’re murdering the world,” Chen said.
“No,” Emma said. “Because as difficult as this will be, I promise humanity will not go extinct. Using the ORCA, we will return to a natural order. A forgotten order where we coexisted in balance with the Titans. The first gods.”
Now her presentation showed images of cave paintings. Monsters and people.
“This is a dangerous path,” Serizawa said. “You are meddling with forces beyond our comprehension, gambling with the lives of billions!”
“And what are you gambling with, Serizawa? Monarch is broken. It’s on the verge of being shut down by a government whose only objective is to eradicate the creatures and if that happens, what will our chances be?”
Mark had heard way more than enough.
“You are out of your goddamn mind!” he said. “First you put our daughter’s life in danger, now you get to decide the fate of the world? That’s rich, Emma!”
“I couldn’t be more sane and Madison couldn’t be stronger. After we lost Andrew, I trained her to survive and at least now she will have a fighting chance!”
“A fighting chance? Why don’t you listen to yourself? It’s not all math, Emma. Some things you can’t control.”
“And there are some things that you can’t run from!”
That stung, all the more because it was true. He had run, to the bottle, to the wilderness. Anything rather than face what had happened to his boy.
But there were different kinds of running. He’d run away. Emma was running toward.
“This won’t bring him back to us,” he said.
That got her. He’d known it would. He watched her struggle with it, but that certainty of hers was so strong. It always was, when she made up her mind about something.
As he feared, she shook it off.
“I can only urge you all to take refuge,” she said. “Over the last sixty years Monarch has prepared bunkers around the world to save and restart civilization. I suggest you find them.”
The screen went black.
For a moment no one said anything. Emma could be convincing. As crazy as it all sounded, she made some good points, and he saw a little doubt on some of their faces.
Chen broke the spell.
“That bitch!” she said.
The problem, Mark thought, was that she could do it. She had already released two of them, and many more were vulnerable. She must have been working at this for a long time, using her clearance to get the necessary codes and information. Odds were good that she had managed to place some of Jonah’s people at some of those sites, sleepers awaiting their orders. The level of coordination was astonishing, but it was – from her point of view – necessary. After Antarctica, the government would move quickly to terminate the other monsters. Emma was making certain they wouldn’t get that chance.
But maybe they could stop this one, whatever it was. It wasn’t free yet. If there was a kill switch, they might be able to fight their way to it.
“How long until this thing lands?” Mark asked.
“Three minutes,” Colonel Foster said.
“You might wanna rethink that,” Dr. Stanton said.
“Why?” Foster asked.
“Something’s not right. Check this out.”
Stanton put up security footage from the containment facility. It was littered with bodies wearing Monarch uniforms.
“Emma’s not at Isla de Mara,” Stanton said. “I mean, the signal’s too weak to be local. She’s bouncing it off our satellites. They must be holed up in one of our old bunkers. She could be anywhere.”
Great, Mark thought. Anywhere. And Maddie with her, sheltering, waiting for the apocalypse she had set in motion.
An alarm began blaring.
“What is that?” Mark asked.
“Oh, Jesus,” Coleman said. “She shut down the containment system—”
“How much time do we have?” Serizawa asked.
* * *
“Mateo,” Mariana said. “We have to go. Now.”
“Naana,” her grandson asked, “what’s the matter?”
Mariana had been worried for some years now, but in the last few days her bad feeling had become stronger.
It had to do with the volcano.
She was not a newcomer to the island; her father’s family had fished these waters for many generations; the line of her maternal grandmothers went back before the arrival of the Spanish.
For them, for
her, the volcano was known as El Nido del Demonio, the Nest of the Demon. There were many superstitions about the place; her Huasteco great-grandmother scared her when she was little with tales of the great fire demon that slept in the mountain. She had become skeptical of her great-grandmother’s stories after the age of ten or so, and by the time she was grown, and educated, she rarely thought about those tales.
When she was in her twenties, strangers came to the island. Her daughter Marisol was only two years old. They said something about environmental contamination and quarantined much of the volcano. No one ever went to the Demon’s Nest unless they had to, so no one really cared. But it made her and others think of the legends again. Eventually, they built a geothermal power plant in the mouth of the volcano. All was quiet for decades.
But then, five years ago, when she watched on the television as Godzilla and other monsters crushed San Francisco, she began to wonder, and worry. Monsters were no longer merely the tales of a great-grandmother. They existed.
Lately, there had been new activity on the Demon’s Nest. Her cousin Valeria had seen helicopters landing, and also strange men making their way from an unknown ship at the docks.
Gunshots had been heard on the mountain. Two young men who worked at the plant were missing.
And now more strangers came, these from Monarch, the organization that hunted Godzilla and other monsters.
She could think of only one explanation. Others felt the same; she already heard bedlam in the streets. Word was that soldiers were evacuating people from the town square, in helicopters.
She looked down at her grandson and thought once again how beautiful he was. He had the same black, curly hair as his mother, and his father Juan’s soulful eyes. His father had gone beneath the waves fishing and never returned. His mother, her sweet Marisol, had been killed in a car crash in Tampico, where she had been trying to find work.
She was all Mateo had, now. And he was all she had, except for photographs and keepsakes.
“It’s nothing to worry about, Mateo,” she said. “We’re going for a ride in a helicopter, that’s all.”
“Oh,” he said, brightening up. “That sounds fun. Should I get some things?”
“No,” she said. “We’re in a hurry.”
Even as she said it, she spotted the little cross Marisol used to wear, hanging on a peg beneath her larger crucifix.
Quickly, she pulled it down and gave it to the boy.
“Take this,” she said. “It was your mother’s.”
When he’d put it on, she grabbed his hand.
“We need to be quick,” she said. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, Naana,” he replied.
* * *
At least Dad is okay, Maddie thought. For now.
But nothing else was. None of this was happening the way Mom had explained it. She had left a lot of things out. Like how many people were going to die. Like what it was like to see someone die, to think your own father was dead. It sounded like a good thing, saving the world. Seven billion people. More people were going to make it than wouldn’t, she’d been told, and then all the peace and harmony would begin. Wouldn’t it?
Necessary losses. But who got to decide who was necessary and who wasn’t? Her dad was right. One person shouldn’t get to decide for everyone, especially when they didn’t even know a decision was being made. It was more than unfair – it was unjust.
It had been weird, hearing her parents arguing again. On the one hand, it had seemed like old times – the worst part of old times, anyway. As always, with her in the middle. She remembered the feeling that she somehow had to please them both, to keep them together. But then Dad left, and she realized she had to focus on Mom.
But now she was right back where she’d been, but worse. Because this time they weren’t fighting about Dad’s drinking or Mom working all the time or the ORCA or whatever. The problems in their family were now literally the problems of everyone on Earth. Sure, it had always sort of felt that way to her. But now it was actually true.
She was tired of thinking. She activated the screen and found a station covering the Isla de Mara evacuation. At least they were trying. Monarch. Dad.
It wouldn’t be enough. She knew who was in the mountain.
“Containment system bypassed. We’re patched in, ready to broadcast the ORCA.”
That was one of Jonah’s guys – she didn’t know his name. Some techie. Normally Asher would be hanging around, too. But Asher was dead.
She thought back to the moment after Asher died, back in Antarctica. She wondered if Jonah had written Asher off as a “necessary loss.” Probably.
Jonah looked at her mom expectantly.
“Doctor?” he said.
Her mother walked past Maddie, over to the ORCA. She opened the case. To Maddie, she seemed a little hesitant. And she should be. There were still tons of people on the island. People who hadn’t done anything to deserve what was about to happen.
“Mom,” Maddie said. “Don’t.”
Her mother wavered. She looked at her, surprised. Maybe she could be talked down. After all, three Titans were already out there.
“I’m sorry,” Jonah sneered. “Did a child just tell you what to do?”
“Maybe Dad’s right,” Maddie pushed on. “Maybe this isn’t the way—”
“By all means, Dr. Russell,” Jonah said. “Let’s reconsider our entire plan now, especially after telling your friends about it.”
“Madison, we talked about this,” her mother said. “No,” Maddie said. “You said we were doing this to help people, that we’d give them a chance to find shel—”
Jonah banged the table with his hand, hard.
“We don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “Did you really think this would be easy? Painless?”
He sent her a malicious look, but he was still talking to Mom.
“Is that what you told her?”
“Leave her out of this,” her mother said.
“Why? You’re the one who pulled her into it. Madison, tell me – exactly what did Mommy sell you on? Some grand utopia? Man and monster living together in blissful harmony?”
He was exactly right, but the level of condescension was more than she could take.
“Bite me, dickhead,” Maddie said.
Jonah’s cold gaze bored into hers. He put his hand on the butt of his gun. The hairs on the back of her neck pricked up, and she felt a chill.
“If I were you,” he said, softly, “I would be very careful what I wished for.”
“And if I were you,” her mother said, fury just barely contained, “I’d learn how to use the ORCA myself before I did something as stupid as threaten my daughter.”
There was absolutely nothing about her mother when she was like this that suggested she could be screwed around with. Jonah was a scary guy, as heartless as they came. But right now, he and Mom were toe to toe.
“Sir,” the other guy said, “they’re attempting to lock us out. It’s now or never.”
“Emma,” Jonah said. “You came to me. This was your plan. We both want to save the planet, but everything is going to die if you don’t see it through.”
Her mom looked over at her.
“Please, at least let them get to safety,” Maddie said.
Her finger still hovered over the activation button. Mom was listening to her. Maybe…
“Ma’am?” the man said. “Our window is closing.”
Maddie saw her mother’s hand tremble. But she activated the ORCA.
“I’m sorry, Madison, but this is bigger than just you and me.”
Once again, the device began pulsing.
Mom, no, she thought. But now it really was too late. Maybe her mother hadn’t lied to her, not exactly. But she felt fundamentally betrayed, in a way she never had before. She’d thought she knew her mother.
She knew now that she did not.
“Signal’s good,” the tech said, studying his instruments. “Specimen’s vita
ls are spiking. Patching us into the next containment site—”
“No,” her mother said. “Not yet. We do this gradually. One at a time.” She looked at Maddie as if that was supposed to reassure her.
Madison felt tears starting and fled the room. The idea that Jonah would see her cry just now was unbearable.
ELEVEN
From the notes of Dr. Chen:
I saw a Storm Bird in the heavens,
high above us, rising like a cloud.
It was a terror,
its aspect was monstrous,
its mouth was flame
its breath obliteration
—The Epic of Gilgamesh
Tablet IV
Mark watched the evacuation on the monitors, while keeping one eye on the display of the volcano.
G-Team was supervising the airlift in the town square, but there were hundreds left to go, and the crowd was in a full panic. That only grew worse when the ground began to shake, and the volcano rumbled.
* * *
When Barnes and the others first arrived, they found a sleepy little fishing town with a nice town square surrounded by colorful old buildings and not much going on at all.
But now it was freaking chaos. At first it was a rush to the docks, whole families piling into fishing boats, headed for the mainland. But now that all of the boats were gone, and the airlift had been set up in the town square, it was all coming down on them. Too many people, too few aircraft, and not enough time.
“What’s got them so rattled?” he wondered aloud. “Nothing’s happened yet.”
“We’re Monarch,” Martinez replied. “Five years ago, maybe nobody knew what that was. But now they do. You don’t think anyone here believes our bullshit story that the volcano’s about to go boom, do you? They have TV here, too, you know. They know why Monarch shows up. Monsters.”
Barnes nodded. “Yeah, that’s fair,” he said, silently counting the people climbing into the Osprey.
A group still waiting surged forward, trying to get around.
“One at a time!” Barnes yelled. “Back up!”
But they didn’t, or at least not much. What could he do, shoot them? No. But things couldn’t keep going like this, either.
A piercing shriek suddenly split the air. Not a claxon or an alarm – like nothing he’d ever heard.
