by M. C. Norris
“Look out the window! Look out the freaking window!” Takashi screamed.
It was as though one of Shanghai’s architectural wonders had come suddenly to life, tore loose of its footings in the city skyline, and just waded out into the sea. The teetering thing balanced atop those columned tentacles for legs was something incomprehensible to an earthling mind. Blood, black as squid ink, streamed down the upturned bowl of a shell from a harpoon wound just beneath its cyclopean eye. Evidently, the monster had surfaced right between the dolphin and the bloodfin, just as Collin squeezed the trigger. Horned mantis pincers folded prettily before its breastplate clung to a wriggling segment of the bloodfin that had been snipped all to pieces. The creature conveyed the chunk of meat into a grinder of busy mouthparts. It appeared as though the Chinese dragons of the Yellow Sea were nothing but a snack for this gargantuan monster that didn’t seem much bothered by the harpoon near its eye.
“Charybdis,” Skyler said, almost laughing in disbelief. “It’s a Charybdis.”
“Kah-what?”
“This is one of the ones … so perfect … regenerates limbs, and—”
“Good God almighty,” Commander Bent said, blurting his exclamation as he staggered a couple of steps away from the window.
Collin toggled down the row of available dolphin streams, until the cursor came to rest upon the looming eye in the sky. He had him. He really had that monster as one of his streaming options. This odds of such a fortune resulting from collateral damage was staggering, but Collin felt as though he’d just unlocked the big boss character in the greatest fighting game ever created. He double-clicked with his tongue, and went tumbling back into the destroyer’s immense head.
“Oh my God, it’s getting closer.” Jill turned to shout down the corridor at their pilot, who seemed to be sitting awestruck in the Kaiju’s shadow. “What are you doing up there? Get the ship out of the way!”
“We can’t move,” he replied. “We’re tethered to the SEAL aircraft.”
“Get the hell out of here,” J.J. shouted in Bent’s face. “You’re going to get us all killed!”
The host’s body was so alien, in every sense. How to maneuver such a top-heavy and lilting creature upon a clutch of tentacles was not a task that Collin was able to wrap his mind around. It wasn’t anything like piloting a dolphin, given the whole mess of awkward appendages. The pincers were easy enough to see through his mind’s eye, but the legs were another story.
“It’s going to fall!” Takashi said.
“Get back to the ship. That thing’s injured. We can take it down.” Commander Bent’s voice prompted a thunder of boots toward the cockpit. “You people.” He pointed at J.J., narrowed his eyes, and then swung his finger around at the others. “You land this aircraft at Shanghai field command. Now!”
“Wait,” Skyler shouted after the departing SEALs. “It’s on our side!”
“Ohhh, cheese and crackers …” Collin’s whole world teetered like an inverted pendulum. The incoming data stream suggested that its tentacles were entangled in some sort of debris on the sea floor. Probably all of that wreckage. It made the challenge of learning to walk on numerous legs a nearly impossible feat. Bloodfins writhed through his undercarriage like a bed of eels, but due to the position of his single eye, surmounted directly atop the great mushroom cap of a shell, he couldn’t see them. It blocked the view of anything beneath the rim of its carapace. The creature seemed to be designed as a bottom dweller, an armored tank with a watchful topside eye for a turret, scanning the skies above for any sign of danger. Those tentacle legs would’ve been more effective in the weightless conditions of the deep, where the monster could leap tiptoed through lightless abysms, poised to snap its claws at anything that might fit inside of its mouth. Encumbered by the gravitational pull of the surface world, it was decidedly more unsteady.
“Wait a minute. Is that you?” J.J. smacked Collin in the shoulder.
“What are you doing? Collin, look out! You’re going to crash right into us.” Jill grabbed hold of his upper arm.
“Guys, quit touching me.” Collin yanked his arm away, and rose from the floorboards between seats to his feet. They were bumping him out of the verisimilitude of the stream. He rose from between the seats. “I think I need to stand to be able to do this.”
The world from his Kaiju perspective steadied, as he divided the multitude of legs to better portray his familiar bipedal posture, thereby convincing his mind’s eye to grasp control over the halved appendages. Moving several with each step, he edged his way out of the entanglement of sunken ships, and away from the danger zone around the Devil Ray. “I can do this,” he said, in a whisper.
“Lean back a little,” J.J. said. “You’re pitched too far forward. That’s what’s making you off-balance. Just lean back.”
“Shut up,” Jill said, in a hiss.
Although he couldn’t see his own feet, the tentacles were highly sensitive. Once he was able to recognize the sensory feedback from his appendages, his muddled orientation in the alien body began to clarify. J.J. was actually right. Leaning back, and tipping his shell forward not only felt more comfortable, more balanced, but also afforded him the protection of walking behind a massive shield. Collin raised his arms, and unhinged his enormous pincers. Snapping them shut produced a thunderclap that evoked a few cries of alarm.
“Collin,” Takashi said, “you are one bad mamma jamma.”
“The Charybdis is one of the toughest fighters in the interaction tanks,” Skyler said. “Those pincers possess incredible crushing force. They sliced right any species we ever pitted Carl against.”
“Wait, what?” Takashi replied. “Did you just say, ‘Carl?”
“Yeah. Carl the Charybdis.” Skyler shrugged. “I told you, I had my favorites.”
Takashi reached out to knuckle-bump Jill. “That’s awesome.”
“Look out, buddy,” J.J. said. “SEALs are tacking around behind you.”
“Call them off, then. Don’t let them mess this up!”
J.J. dragged the periscopic viewfinder back down from the ceiling, and patched over to the military radio band. “Psyjack to Commander Bent. That’s a friendly target. I repeat. That Kaiju is a friendly target. Hold your fire.”
“He’s not going to listen,” Jill said. “Get Captain Roswell on the line.”
“SWCC Devil Ray to Barrier One. Psyjack to Barrier One.”
“There’s no time. They’re swinging around into firing position,” Skyler said. “Collin, you need to get out of there!”
“How?” he shouted.
Plodding forward without stumbling was becoming a familiar articulation, but rotating his top-heavy bulk upon that precarious and teetering scaffold was quite another story. Collin could see the engaging gunship. When he leveled his carapace, his turret eye afforded him a commanding field of vision that was every bit of three-hundred-sixty degrees. By tipping his domed shell at the waist, he could angle the natural shield to provide his underside protection from an attack in any direction. That was helpful. However, rotating the whole show dipped his balance off-kilter.
“Here they come.”
A white flash from the gunship preceded two spiraling projectiles that burned intertwining trails of cordite through the air. It looked like it was going to be a direct hit. Collin angled his armored carapace in the direction of the incoming missiles, and braced himself for the blow. At the last second, he discovered that he was able to withdraw his cyclopean eye beneath a protective hatch. Two concussions rocked through his cavernous enormity. Their shockwaves shivered down his weird appendages to the tips of his tentacle feet.
“You’re going to fall.”
Collin reopened his armored eyelid in time to see shelves of storm clouds racing past, from one horizon of his vastness to the next. The effect of the explosions hadn’t exactly hurt, but they’d certainly left him feeling dazed, and his ungainly new form had been knocked into a state of imbalance that could not be corrected. T
he ocean received his toppling enormity with a thunderous embrace.
Chapter Eight
“Stay down, dude,” Takashi said. “Let those tools think they nailed you.”
Blinking his single eye in the new environment, Collin was amazed by how well this strange creature was able to see through the polluted murk of the Yellow Sea. Evidently well adapted to life in the darkest of conditions, its vision seemed to be bolstered with filters and light-gathering photoreceptors that enabled clear vision, even through the worst turbidity. As his stolen body sank deeper into the shipping channel, his vision became no more obscured than if he’d been immersed in tap water. That wonderful eye kept making adjustments for the dimming conditions, harvesting ample light from a barren field of vision.
“What’s your depth?” Takashi asked. Clearly, the others were also baffled by what they were seeing on the overhead monitor.
“Eighty meters. The sea’s pretty shallow here. I need to get out into deeper water, and fast.”
“No-no-no. Don’t you even move,” J.J. said. “That gunship’s circling right over you. They may be packing depth charges.”
“Sounds like a good reason to move, if you ask me.”
“That’s why I didn’t ask you. Play dead.”
Collin descended to the bottom of the channel, where he settled heavily into lost centuries of nautical detritus. A voluminous curtain of silt unfurled from beneath the periphery of his bulk, and rippled out over the wasteland like fallout from a meteor impact. Disturbed for the first time in perhaps forever, carcasses of wayward ships groaned and crumbled before the pressure wave. Even the visual filters of the Charybdis’ amazing eye were overcome in the swelling cloud of debris.
“I really don’t like it down here,” Collin said. “I can’t see.”
“You don’t have to like it. Just be still, and hate it all you want.”
“I can feel things moving around underneath me.”
“It’s just those old shipwrecks settling. Hulls collapsing. Trapped pockets of air escaping. Hang tight, buddy.”
“No. No, I don’t think that’s what I’m feeling at all.” The fog began to dissipate, revealing a twisted jungle of forms fallen from the surface world. Grim testimony to the ocean’s timeless might, the world’s oldest shipping channel was an eerie crucible of tangled remnants from every age. Ancient Chinese junks hung preserved and encrusted with sea life. Wooden masts lanced through folds of steel skin. Slain warships rusted enmeshed in the old ribs of merchantmen, battle wounds grotesque and gaping.
“Just be cool.”
“I can feel them,” Collin said, panting for breath. “They’re all around me.”
“That’s not you down there, buddy. Remember that. You’re right here with us, inside the Devil Ray.”
Collin fixated his borrowed eye on the ruin of a cruise ship. Brightly painted, it stood out against the funereal backdrop as a relative newcomer to this lost world of the dead. He was not alone down here. He could see them. Ghostly faces pressed against portals, leering through tenantless sockets. It looked as though they too were spellbound by the masses of slithering forms that were now closing in.
“They’re all over me!”
“There’s nothing down there but some old wrecks, hon,” Jill replied.
“For crying out loud. I don’t know why we’re even pretending that we can’t just stand up right now and swat that stupid gunboat right out of the sky.”
“Takashi!” Jill replied. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“I’m not even kidding, Jill. We are literally moments away from becoming a worldwide phenomenon—that is, if we take charge—and quit hiding on the sea floor like a fat punk. We’re standing at the biggest crossroads of our lives. Right here. Right now. You guys seriously want to turn in our keys? That’s what’ll happen. We land in Shanghai, we’re through.”
“That’s some really dangerous talk, dude,” Jill replied.
“Dangerous? Who exactly are you afraid of? We’re the dangerous ones. Wake up and see this moment for what it really is. We’re either on the brink of international stardom, or fifteen minutes from being grounded again.”
“Who’s up for six-months of air hockey?” J.J. said.
“Exactly. Screw that. This game has just changed, boys and girls. We’ve got the big gun. We don’t need the Navy. We don’t need this hovercraft. We can operate right out of a hotel room in Shanghai. Who’s with me?”
“You need to be careful,” Skyler said, shooting Takashi a glare. “Jill is right to be concerned with where you’re going with all of this.”
“Well-well-well,” Takashi said, returning Skyler’s glare with a more unsettling one. “I guess we all see whose side you’re really on.”
“I’m on Psyjack’s side, always and forever. It’s as much my program as yours.”
“Sure you’re on Psyjack’s side, regardless of the roster. I don’t guess it matters to you whether we’re sitting in these seats tomorrow morning, or four SEALs.”
“Stop assuming the worst.” Skyler jabbed a finger at Takashi’s chest. “Bent is the best fighter in the open ocean. Right now, he’s just got a wounded ego needing stroked.”
“Well, then I nominate you, as the stroker of Bent’s—whatever.”
“Oh, my God.” Jill slumped back into her seat, closed her eyes, and slapped her hands over her face.
“We don’t need them, you guys. The gate is wide open. Just run through it!” Takashi glanced around the aircraft. “We’re not a bunch of college kids anymore, begging for a stupid contract. We’ve been there, done that. Our future holds bigger things than depending on a government paycheck. I’m talking about us standing up in defense of our world, with our technology, and without any military assistance. First thing we need to do is show those SEALs who is running the show, and there’s only one language they’ll understand.”
“That’s enough.” Skyler lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I know about you, Takashi. I’ve read your file, and I knew what we were getting into by bringing you along.”
“Ouch, sister.”
“Look, what I meant was I know what you’ve been through, and I know you’ve got every reason to resent the system.”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through.” Takashi’s eyes burned like a pair of embers in his skull.
“I didn’t mean to downplay anything.”
Takashi grinned. “Psyjack is streaming live now, baby. Our puppet strings? They just got snipped.” Takashi spread his arms wide, and rotated on his heels to deliver a zealous leer at everyone. As he did so, the Devil Ray lilted gently toward Shanghai’s garish skyline. “This is our moment. Right here. Right now.”
“I think that we all just need some time to discuss this,” Jill said, “and to decide what all of this means.”
“There’s no time for discussions,” Takashi replied. “The last time those SEALs tried to manhandle our program, we all lost our jobs, she lost her legs, and we all watched our dolphins burn.”
“He’s right,” J.J. said.
“I don’t know much more of this I can take!” Collin shouted.
Serpentine bodies oozed through every hole in the ruins. They spilled through the guts of rotting vessels, exploring Collin’s prone form with the worst sort of curiosity. He could feel the graveyard worms writhing up through his tentacles, probing his underside for soft spots. Collin ducked his turreted eye back beneath its protective hatch as one of the braver beasts wriggled over the top of his shell.
“He’s not delusional,” J.J. said. “There’s something else down there.”
“What are those things?” Jill asked.
“Bloodfin larva,” Skyler replied.
“What are they doing?”
She hesitated, before avoiding Jill’s question. “This is the evidence I hoped I’d never live to see, but it’s true. The Kaiju are breeding.”
Collin let out a shriek. It didn’t really hurt, but the sensation of a chunk of meat be
ing twisted loose from one of his tentacles was not exactly a pleasant one. He could feel dozens of them clamping their serrated jaws and spinning, spinning, tearing loose ragged mouthfuls of his flesh. “They’re eating me!”
“Don’t freak out,” Takashi replied. “You’re ginormous, remember? Unstoppable. You’re Godzilla. Those little maggots can’t possibly hurt you.”
“They are hurting me!”
“Switch him off,” J.J. said. “Pull the plug. Whatever you’ve got to do.”
“Are you crazy?” Takashi said. “We can’t turn the big gun loose. The SEALs are right there. They’ll light him up!”
“Collin’s in too deep. You need to back off, man. Back out of that thing’s head, or I’m serious, I’ll yank the plug.”
There was no backing out. Not now. Collin was the Charybdis, at one with a body that was under attack. Gathering his lower extremities beneath his domed carapace, he spread his gill slits and filled his internal bladders with seawater.
“What’s he doing? What are you doing?”
“I’ve seen this before,” Skyler replied, eyes brightening, “in the interaction tanks.”
“He’s swelling up like a balloon.”
“Yes,” Skyler whispered, a smile curling the corner of her lips.
Collin expanded his inner chambers until every hollow was filled, every diaphragm stretched taut as a drum. His mantis blades clattered fair warning, but the pain refused to cease. Tormented, enraged, he swiveled his great shield of a head until his proboscis mouth was aimed like a great cannon at the swarms around his feet.
“What are you doing, bro?”
At once, he discharged every bladder through whorled channels in his shell. A massive system of internal hydraulics compressed the fluid against a vocal bellows, converting the forced seawater into a titanic blast of sound. As though an atomic bomb had just been detonated, an expanding shockwave across the sea floor erased the nautical graveyard in a dilating ring of destruction that spirited shipwrecks into silt. The ocean’s surface dropped to expose the glistening carapace of the monster, if only for a second, before the sea backfilled the void with a slap and a foaming geyser that swallowed the hovering SEAL gunship. When the pillar of water collapsed, the Mad Hatter’s aircraft was gone.
