by Greg Keyes
Better not to plan that far ahead. He might lose focus.
They still had one HEAV, but at the rate the temple was collapsing, they wouldn’t for long.
Jia and Ilene, of course, came to the same conclusion, sprinting through the shower of stone toward the vehicle. They piled in the back as he climbed into the pilot’s seat.
He looked up briefly and saw Kong watching them, concerned, but now that they were in the HEAV he seemed satisfied, so the Titan turned his attention to the charred hole on the floor. His axe lay nearby, the blade shimmering blue with radiation. Kong snatched it up, gripped it like a lumberjack and without the slightest hesitation leapt into the hole.
The temple was in full collapse now. Nathan could no longer see the entrance they had come in by; as far as he could tell, the whole mountain was coming down. He looked again at Kong’s exit.
That’s our only way out, too, he realized.
He gazed at the unfamiliar controls; then he started guessing, flipping switches and pushing buttons, anything to get a reaction out of the machine. Why hadn’t he watched the pilot? Given his past luck, he should have guessed he would have to fly the damn thing.
“Hindsight, twenty-twenty,” he muttered, under his breath.
“What?” Ilene said. “What are you doing?”
“I think Kong is going after Godzilla,” he replied. “Hold on, ladies.”
“Yes,” Ilene said. “Let’s go, now.”
Nathan nodded and pulled back on the stick, bracing for the acceleration.
Nothing happened.
What? he wondered, desperately. What am I doing wrong? The stick makes it go, right?
Jia stabbed her finger at the control panel.
“Nathan, how about the red one?” Ilene said. “The red one…”
“Which one?” Nathan asked.
“The red one,” Ilene said, more frantically, as rocks began pounding earnestly on the craft. “The huge red one that says ‘Ignition’ right there.”
Oh. Yeah. He punched the red button, and the engines roared to life.
“Right,” Nathan said. “Thank you.” He nodded at Jia. It seemed someone had been watching the pilot, after all.
The HEAV lifted up, wobbling a bit. He tilted the stick up, then down, diving into the hole after Kong.
Apex Facility, Hong Kong
When Madison was sure the pilot was gone, she carefully opened the hatch she had noticed in the bottom of the skull and ascended the ladder into it.
Inside was pure weirdness, with all kinds of crazy wiring and consoles and keyboards—and yet a single focal point: the helmet the pilot had been wearing, and the chair he had been sitting in.
There was another problem she noticed immediately; in one side of the skull, a glass wall with a door set in it opened into another room, where several tech-looking types were gathered. None of them had noticed her yet, and she crouched down below their sight level to keep it that way. She found the door’s keypad and locked it, flinching at the sound of the bolts sliding into place, but again, it seemed to go unnoticed by the techs, who were clearly busy at their tasks.
She motioned through the hatch for the others to come up.
“Stay low,” she said, and then moved to the main console. There was lots going on, with a monitor showing POWER UPLOAD IN PROGRESS.
She remembered the Mechagodzilla and its sudden power down. That might explain the upgrade; whatever batteries it had been running on hadn’t been enough to keep it going for long. Now they were trying to fix that.
Bernie came up and started taking pictures with what looked an awful lot like a flip phone. She didn’t have to ask; he had done five or six episodes about the dangers of smartphones.
“Yeah, going viral,” he said.
Josh poked his head up next, but Madison was still focused on the upgrade the system was processing.
“I wonder if we can shut it down from here,” she said.
“I don’t like this,” Josh said.
“You know,” Bernie said, looking around at the inside of the skull and its neon-pink lighting, “if this wasn’t contributing to world destruction, this would be a great DJ booth. I know that it—” He broke off, then continued, frantically. “Maintenance!” he said. “I’m here for maintenance.”
Madison realized that one of the techs outside had seen him, and now they were all staring through the glass.
“Madison, we should go,” Josh opined.
Yet Madison dithered. The doors were locked. If Bernie could buy her enough time to figure this out, she might still be able to give Walter Simmons and Apex a very bad day.
Bernie was still at the window, shouting to one of the techs. “You don’t have to alert the…” He trailed off, turning to Madison.
“She doesn’t buy it,” he sighed. “Madison, we need to go. The woman with the villain hairdo? She’s getting security, so we need to leave.”
On cue, two armed guards appeared at the window.
“Madison,” Josh said, “they have guns!”
“Hey guys,” Bernie said to the guards. “It’s soundproof, so I can’t really hear. I want to communicate.”
“Open the door,” the guard demanded, through the obviously non-soundproof door.
“Say again?” Bernie said.
Madison scanned the control panel, looking for something, anything that could help. If it was there, it didn’t jump out at her.
Behind her, she heard the door crash open. As she turned, security guards poured in, their guns aimed at her and her friends.
Monarch Command and Control, Hong Kong
Why Godzilla was burning a hole in the ground was anyone’s guess, but it bought them precious time for the evacuation. Ground vehicles streamed out of the area, and helicopters airlifted out those in areas already rendered inaccessible by the destruction. A path between the waterfront and the Apex buildings had been cleared and now peripheral areas were emptying. They had refrained from attacking the Titan while he was busy breathing blue, because as destructive as the effects of his drilling were, it wasn’t as bad as when he was on the move.
But now, finally, he stopped, lifted his head, and seemed to search around.
“What was that all about?” Mark asked. He wished that Ishiro Serizawa was here, or Dr. Chen—anyone from the old team who might have a guess as to what the hell Godzilla was doing. Because he was clueless.
Whatever it was, he seemed to be done now, and for a moment it almost appeared that Godzilla was flailing again, trying to decide what was next. Then he took a step, and another. Toward Apex. But with a bit of hesitation.
“Just go home,” Mark murmured. “Nobody to fight here.”
“Holy God,” one of the techs suddenly yelped.
“What?” Mark asked, moving to the screen. Director Guillerman stood to his side.
The picture showed an enlarged view of the hole, its rim still glowing red from Godzilla’s breath. Something had just come out of it. Mark wasn’t sure, but it looked like an axe with a shining blue blade. Then his gaze tracked back to the hand holding it. Immense, human-like—furry.
Another hand reached out of the hole and slapped down on the half-molten surface.
And then, like some monstrous primeval deity of the Earth, Kong rose up.
“I do not understand what is happening,” the director said. “Did Godzilla—”
“Kong was in Hollow Earth,” Mark said. “We got word hours ago.”
As impossible as it seemed, Godzilla had burned a tunnel all the way down to Hollow Earth.
They both fell silent as the Titan clambered out of the hole. He stood, wielding the glowing axe. He turned until he spotted Godzilla.
For a long moment, the two Titans locked gazes.
“Easy, boys,” Mark said.
“Doctor, what’s happening?” the director asked.
“They’re both alphas,” Mark said. “If they were two lizards, or two apes suddenly in the same territory, they might do threa
t displays. Make a big show of their strength, their power, their size. They wouldn’t necessarily fight.”
“That’s promising,” the director said, as Godzilla and Kong continued to stare at each other. Then Godzilla slashed his tail back and forth, and assumed a threatening posture. In response, Kong put his axe down and pounded his fists into the concrete.
“Threat displays,” Guillerman said.
“Yeah,” Mark said. “If they were both lizards or both apes. But they’re Titans, so—”
Before he could finish the thought, Kong broke toward Godzilla in a dead-on charge, crushing everything in his way, knocking cars and buses out of his path, leveling a high-rise with a brush of his thigh.
Godzilla, in turn, rushed toward Kong.
“I think we’re watching round two,” Mark said.
“My money’s on the ape,” the tech said. “He has a weapon.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. The weapon was interesting—its glow was the same color as Godzilla’s fins when they lit up. “See if you can isolate a radiation signature from that thing,” he said.
“On it, Doc,” the tech said.
Doc? Mark thought. Nobody called him that. Was everything turning upside down?
Kong came out strong, swinging the huge weapon in a blow meant to take Godzilla’s head off.
But Godzilla ducked. The axe sliced into a building and stuck there. Enraged, Kong yanked it free, bringing most of the structure down with it. He swung again, and once more Godzilla avoided the blow, putting his head down and butting Kong into the still-collapsing building. Mark felt the jolt in the concrete floor and tried to imagine what a couple of hundred tons of Godzilla smacking into you would feel like. As Kong tried to recover, Godzilla bit his neck and worried him like a dog with a bone, smashing him into buildings. Mark noticed the blue light creeping up Godzilla’s fins. He was charging up his beam.
Kong punched himself free, then brought his elbow down on Godzilla’s back just as a blue ray shot from his mouth. Kong, recognizing the danger, grabbed Godzilla by the jaws and tried to pry his head apart, but another surge of atomic breath forced him to shift his grip to a hold on the reptile’s neck. Kong then tossed Godzilla into a skyscraper. Before the saurian Titan could recover, the ape leapt, bounced off another building, and landed a haymaker on the side of Godzilla’s head. Kong tried to renew his headlock, but Godzilla shook him off. Kong answered by clutching both of his fists together and hammering Godzilla down to the pavement—and when the giant lizard stood back up, he used nearby buildings to swing forward, slamming into his opponent with both feet and the full weight of his body.
As Godzilla reeled back from the hit, Kong paused to beat his chest a few times and recover his axe, just as Godzilla began charging up another blast. Kong lunged forward, jamming the handle of his weapon into the enemy’s mouth. That worked for a few seconds, staving off the energy attack; then Godzilla hurled Kong back, finally giving him the range he needed to use his atomic blast properly.
That’s it for Kong, Mark thought.
Godzilla let go, the beam jetting from his maw, straight toward the other Titan.
Kong jerked his axe up defensively.
The beam struck the blade and the beam stopped. They stood like that for a moment, Godzilla blasting blue fire and Kong using his axe as a shield. And the blade was glowing brighter, and brighter…
“Wait a minute,” Mark said, leaning in to the monitor. “Is that—”
“Sir,” the Tech said. “I’ve isolated the weapon like you asked. It’s the same as Godzilla—”
“It’s a fin!” Mark said. “See? That axe—the blade is a dorsal fin like Godzilla has!”
The blast forced Kong back, but he kept the glowing weapon in front of him. He seemed as surprised as anyone at the turn of events, staring incredulously at the glowing blade. While he was thus distracted, Godzilla followed, crashing into the ape and flipping him backward to the water. Godzilla levered up as Kong continued the charge, swinging the shining axe and sinking it deep into one of Godzilla’s thighs. The saurian shrieked, slamming Kong again, hurling him into the harbor, leaving the axe buried in his leg. Godzilla reached down with his mouth, wrenched the weapon out and hurled it so that it stuck in a skyscraper half a mile away.
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 o
f 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 enter. He wore a black suit over a blue shirt unbuttoned to the third button. No tie. Casual shoes, salt-and-pepper beard, a drink in a glass tumbler. If you looked up “tech-company giant” in the encyclopedia, this was the picture next to it. Walter Simmons—CEO of Apex, genius, technological savior. He watched them enter with an almost playful expression as he sipped his drink.
