by Greg Keyes
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 then. Although at first Ilene had thought it was ceremonial, she was now starting to wonder if it was actually a tool—and, more specifically, an axe. Chimpanzees made weapons of stones and branches, but the thing Kong held looked like a blade had been hafted to a large bone, the kind of complex weapon only humans were known to make.
Of course, chimps did not build temples for themselves, or work in abstract art. The time for comparing the species that produced Kong to other great apes was probably long past. There was evidence of great intelligence here, of a complex culture. What else had this species created? Were there lost cities scattered through these jungles and wastes? They had only seen one small section of Hollow Earth. If they explored far enough, they might find living members of Kong’s species.
When they returned to the mosaic, they found Maia Simmons standing near it, with an odd-looking device in her hand.
“I don’t understand,” Simmons said. “The energy source is right below our feet.”
Ilene glanced up from the carving. The energy source—in her fascination with the temple, she had almost forgotten what they were here for. Considering it, though, she felt somehow that the carving on the floor around the throne was the key. There was something there, she knew, that she did not understand. Something the pictures were trying to tell her. And Simmons and her device were pointed right at it.
They all gathered closer, surrounding the ancient image.
A faint blue glow fell on the mosaic, but Ilene quickly realized it wasn’t coming from there. When she looked for the source, she saw that Kong’s scepter was glowing. Kong looked at it, puzzled at first, then a little angry. He scowled at it.
If it was an axe—and Ilene was increasingly inclined to think it was—it wasn’t the whole thing glowing, but just the blade. It was not metal, or stone, but something else, like crystal, but not exactly. The light pulsed inside of it, stronger each second, as did the sense of familiarity, the feeling that she had seen something like this before.
Kong figured it out before she did; she saw the light switch on behind his eyes. Brandishing the axe he rose, took a step, lowering the huge weapon onto the carving encircling the throne, placing the axe blade so that it rested in the hollow where the missing fin should go.
Ilene understood then. Kong’s axe was made from the dorsal fin of something like Godzilla. And now it was glowing more brightly, the same light, the same color as the energy that Godzilla exhaled in his most devastating attack.
“It’s the axe,” Ilene said. “It’s drawing radiation from the core like it’s charging it. The myths are real.”
Even as she said it, the blue energy began spidering outward from the axe, filling first the carving, bringing it to a semblance of life, then spreading on across the floor.
“There was a war,” Ilene said. “And they are the last ones standing.”
Everything began to shiver, then tremble, as the blue light waxed in brilliance.
Apex Facility, Hong Kong
Walter Simmons watched as Godzilla crushed his way through Hong Kong, toward him. He knew he ought to be worried. His creation was still powered down and, even if it weren’t, it would never last long enough to defeat Godzilla. He had other weapons systems online, but zero confidence that any of them would even slow Godzilla’s advance, so he disdained to use them. It would seem desperate. He might well be looking at his doom approaching; if that were so, he would meet it with dignity.
But he believed what he had told Serizawa: his daughter would come through in time. There was more at work here than the plan and his genius. Destiny was also on his side; he could feel it. It was time for Godzilla to join the fossils of his ancestors. The time of the Titans was done, and his time was just beginning.
As if on cue, Godzilla suddenly shrieked and jerked to a halt; he spun as if confused, leveling the buildings around him.
“Whoa,” Simmons said. Then he understood. It’s beneath your feet. How long before you figure it out?
His question was answered a moment later when Godzilla stopped and set his stance. Blue radiation ran up his back.
Then he began blasting a hole into the Earth itself. Simmons felt the building shake beneath his feet as the Titan drilled through the mountainous foundations of the city. In the distance, on one of the monitors, he saw the Tsing Ma suspension bridge shudder and sway until the huge cables snapped and it crumpled into the Ma Wan Channel.
Fantastic, he thought, taking a sip of his Scotch. Better than I could have ever imagined.
He grinned, because it could only mean one thing.
“Godzilla’s responding,” he crowed. “They found it!” Maia had come through, as expected.
Kong Temple
As her scanning device began beeping close to a steady tone, Maia Simmons gestured to her men. Nathan watched as they lifted something from the cargo area of one of the HEAVs and brought it toward the mosaic. It looked like a spider crossed with a power drill and maybe a three-dimensional printer, and it walked across the floor until it was near the axe, settling over a part of the floor effulgent with a pure blue light. Then it locked down and began drilling into the stone. Kong growled, deep in his belly. Nathan was about to ask Maia exactly what she was doing when he was distracted by something in the darkness behind Kong’s throne. He had noticed movement on the ceiling earlier; creatures that reminded him of bats. But they had not shown any interest in leaving their dark resting place, at least not after they saw Kong. Maybe it was the weird play of blue light, tricking his eyes, but he thought he saw them moving around up there. Or possibly it was just the general sense of unease he was beginning to feel. Maia’s team was acting awfully quickly, with no particular care taken to determine what they were dealing with.
He hesitated, trying to frame his words carefully, but Ilene beat him to it, and with no attempt at diplomacy.
“What are you doing?” Ilene demanded of Simmons.
Simmons nodded at the machine. “Extracting the sample,” she said.
“This is power beyond your understanding,” Ilene said. “You can’t just drill into it.”
Maia shrugged, unimpressed with Ilene’s outburst.
“My father gets what he wants,” Maia said. “That’s Apex property now.” She looked at the core of glowing stone now inside a little reservoir in the machine. The digital readout began running numbers; it was uploading something.
“We should be able to replicate this now,” she said.
Apex Facility, Hong Kong
Ren was running another series of diagnostics when the needle moved on the energy signature. A lot. It was like a nine-volt battery had just been replaced with a nuclear power plant. This was it. This was what they had been waiting for.
“Energy upgrade incoming,” he reported.
On another screen, a string of figures indicated DNA code uploading. The system around Ren began to respond immediately, incorporating the data, ramping up. Waiting to become.
“Good girl, Maia,” Ren heard Simmons say.
Ren turned to the monitor, watching Gojira, sizing him up. He had watched countless videos of the Titan, read everything he could find, including his father’s notes. He had finally seen him for the first time in Pensacola, but then it hadn’t felt as if Gojira was coming for him.
But that’s what the Titan was doing. Not for him, but for the Mecha he had designed. He had come for it in Pensacola when they first tested some of the components, but by shutting the test down and then shipping out the parts, they had managed to stop him. Gojira had still destroyed half of the factory, but the thing calling him was no lon
ger there, so he had eventually gone on his way. For Simmons, it had actually been a boon, despite the destruction of his facility. It had made Gojira out to be a capricious monster, no better than Ghidorah. People’s fear of Gojira had once been tempered by the belief that he was on the side of humanity. No longer. When the Mecha destroyed him, no one would weep. Simmons would have everything he wanted.
So would he. Defeating Gojira and thus surpassing his father was only the beginning.
But staring at the incoming data, he was starting to sense a problem. This time, they knew the cost of testing the Mecha; they knew it would draw the real Gojira. And Simmons believed they were ready for that. He was ready to bet everything on that. Even his own life.
Ren was not so sure, and he was growing even more uncertain as he watched the upgrade and the odd readings that came with it. The system had been designed to make use of the Hollow Earth energy without knowing exactly what that energy was. And it would work—there was no doubt the Mecha would reach its full potential as designed.
But it might do more. The new data suggested a whole series of uncertainties from the quantum level up. They had harnessed the telepathic potential of the two Ghidorah skulls without ever really understanding how and why they worked. And this new genetic information, so intimately related not just to the energy, but to Gojira and how he metabolized that energy—all of this was introducing a series of X-factors that ought to be explored, quantified, understood. If they kept his creation shut down, if they turned off all of the ancillary systems connected to the skulls—chances were Gojira wouldn’t know exactly where to look. In fact, Ren thought, they could probably relay a false signal elsewhere, to draw Gojira away—give them more time to truly perfect his creation.
But he had a sinking feeling that he would never convince Simmons of any of that.
NINETEEN
At a certain time, the Earth opened in the West, where its mouth is. The Earth opened and the Cussitaws came out of its mouth and settled nearby. But the Earth became angry and ate up their children. Therefore, they moved further west. A part of them, however, turned back and came to the same place they had been and settled there. The greater number remained behind, because they thought it best to do so. Their children, nevertheless, were eaten by the Earth, so that, full of dissatisfaction, they journeyed toward the sunrise.
Speech given by Chekilli, Head Chief of the Upper and Lower Creeks in Savannah, in the presence of Governor
Oglethorpe and written on a buffalo skin in 1735
Kong Temple
“This is the discovery of the millennium,” Ilene told Maia Simmons. “You can’t just strip it for parts.”
Simmons looked at her for a heartbeat or two. Then she shrugged and signaled to her men.
Instantly they moved up, rifles lifted, pointing at her, at Nathan and Jia. Ilene put up her hands; so did Nathan. But Jia just stared at the barrel of the gun pointing at her.
No, Ilene thought. They’re threatening Jia. Kong’s going to lose it.
He did. Roaring, the Titan stepped forward toward the girl.
Simmons pivoted, fear plain on her face. How she could have expected Kong not to react, Ilene didn’t know but…
The distant fluttering in the heights of the cave suddenly came down on them. Whether drawn by the increase in the blue energy or—more likely—spooked by Kong’s outburst—the creatures were flying all over the place. Their wings were batlike, but they were hairless, wrinkled, awful-looking things with raptor-beaked heads. They reminded Ilene of griffins designed in hell. Hellhawks would be a good name for them.
They swarmed Kong, who merely swatted at them in annoyance. They were far too small to be of any real threat to him.
But they were two or three times the size of a person.
One of the flying devils snatched up one of Simmons’s mercenaries. Simmons started to run, her men along with her, but another of the hellhawks snatched a second one of them.
Everything was shaking now, and it wasn’t the monsters, or the machine; it was something coming through the earth itself.
Apex Facility, Hong Kong
Simmons felt giddy as more information poured in. Microscopic cell structures unfolded, looking not so much like animal or plant cells, but more like carbon snowflakes, pulsing with blue energy. Four-letter genetic data became digital instructions. Whatever Maia had found, whatever her machine was analyzing, the results were beyond belief. Everything was falling into place, just as he had known it would. He glanced out at his Godzilla. He had built a jet engine, but thus far he had been running it on rubber bands. But the power of Titans was on the way. Primitive man had feared and worshipped lightning, but even they had learned to steal the fire that storms often left in their wake. Legends told of those who stole the fire of the heavens—Prometheus, Raven, Water-spider—and brought it to mankind. Millennia later, early scientists like Kleist, Musschenbroek, Franklin, Faraday and Ohm had ripped lightning itself from the sky and put it to work in the engines of industry. In the next two centuries, humanity learned to pry energy from the sun, rivers, from the very heart of the atom itself.
The gods of old had been upstaged; mankind now owned all of the power they once had.
Except this, the power at the core of the planet, the life force, the last thing the gods had to give before they were completely eclipsed by the little apes that had once worshipped them. This was not only the culminating achievement of his own life’s work, but of every scientist before him who had dared wrestle with the powers of the universe and seized them for themselves—for the human race itself.
“Mr. Serizawa,” he said. “Start your engines.”
Serizawa didn’t reply right away. Simmons cast him a questioning glance.
“The upgrade is untested,” Serizawa said, at last. “Once we get online, Gojira will come straight for us.”
“He’s been coming since our creation first awoke,” Simmons said. “We must embrace it.”
Serizawa was still hesitant. “We shouldn’t rush this,” he said. “We have no idea how this energy source will affect the AI.”
“Get in the goddamn chair,” Simmons snapped.
Serizawa nodded curtly, then settled into the control chair. Outside, the mechanical Godzilla came back to life; not like before, barely limping along on rubber bands, but ready to take off on jet fuel. Fully operational.
Kong Temple
Dust and flakes of stone drifted down from above, and as the ground shook harder, the ancient temple began to break apart. Ilene watched it happening with two hearts. One was breaking, as a structure that was probably older than any human civilization was being destroyed; the loss was staggering. The other beat in terror; the very real possibility of being crushed fought for precedence with the fear of being killed by one of the hellhawks.
She, Nathan, Jia and their pilot bolted toward the HEAV as the stones collapsed behind them, but they hadn’t made it more than another ten steps when one of the winged monsters came down on the pilot, pinning him to the ground just in front of the vehicle with its nasty, clawed feet. A second landed beside it, and the two began a short spat over the body.
The first drove the intruder off, and then turned to look at them.
* * *
Nathan stepped in front of Ilene and Jia, feeling helpless. If one of those things came at him, he would be shredded in an instant. But if they didn’t get to the HEAV they would all be dead nearly as quickly.
He picked a rock up from the ground and hurled it at the hawk-monster. It bounced harmlessly from the beast’s head, only now it was visibly angrier.
“Okay, wise guy,” Nathan muttered to himself. “What now?”
He picked up another stone, this one just a pebble. The monster started toward him.
Then the stone they were standing on exploded in a burst of blue energy, hurling him from his feet. He saw Kong’s throne implode, and the entire temple go up. A huge boulder smashed his antagonist, and the others of its species to
ok flight, fleeing the destruction.
* * *
The ground lurched as Maia all but dove in to the HEAV, brushing past the remaining mercenaries. She headed up front to the pilot.
“Go, go, go,” she snapped. “Move. Move. What the hell are you waiting for? Let’s go. Go!”
The pilot was frantically flipping switches, and the HEAV jumped up, but then the pilot pulled back hard on the stick.
Kong loomed in front of them, looking dazed, blocking their way. In the distance she could see daylight vanishing as the temple continued to collapse. They only had seconds to get out.
“Get him out of the way,” she screamed. “Shoot him!”
The pilot obliged; the HEAV’s guns began rattling, blasting into Kong at point-blank range. The Titan spun away, and the path was open. The pilot saw this, too, and punched it, aiming them toward the huge pit that had opened in the ground. It was going to be tight, she saw, but they were going to make it.
Then the HEAV came to an abrupt and absolute stop, sending Maia lurching forward. She recovered, looking out the windshield. Kong was there, looking royally pissed off. He had snagged them in midair.
Oh, shit, she thought. “No, no, no—” she said.
Then Kong crushed the HEAV in his fist.
* * *
Nathan watched as Kong snatched Maia’s HEAV from the air. Just before he closed his fist, before fire gushed from every opening, Nathan saw Maia’s face, frozen in an expression of horrified indignation, her mouth working soundlessly.
Then the burning HEAV slammed into the stone floor.
He knew Maia had lied to him, had in fact been in the process of screwing all of them. And even before he was aware of all that, she’d been sort of a pain in the ass. She had been blunt and unapologetic and dismissive, and he had become used to her, even begun to like her—a little. And now she went on his list. The list of people killed on his watch, along with the pilot and other men whose names he had not even bothered to learn.
He felt himself sliding toward self-pity he didn’t have time for, so he cinched it up. Ilene and Jia were still alive, and he cared about them a hell of a lot more than he had ever cared about Maia. If there was anything he could do to get them out of this alive, he had to do it. And after that…
