From the notes of Dr. Chen
The ancient Maori believed there were ten worlds beneath the surface world. The lowest was the home of the goddess Miru and her hordes of reptile gods.
—TU-TE-WANA’ from TU-PARI gat KAWEAU, TUA-TARA,
PA-PA, MOKO-MOKO, lords of lizards and of reptiles;
O’er them MOKO-HIKU-WARU rules as deity and guardian,
Rules in peace!—a god of evil, he in darkness dwells with MIRU,
In the eighth gloom dwells with MIRU, goddess of three nether regions;
Dwells in evil thoughts with MIRU…
TU-TE-WANA’ from MAI-RANGI gat the many gods of reptiles
That in darkness sit with Miru…
…Conflict endless, rends the dwellers in thy waters; Unremittingly thou warrest on the creatures made by TANE’,
Slayest trees, and birds, and insects, preyest on thy forest brother:
Internecine warfare shatters sons of thee on earth, in ocean!
Excerpts from Maori Life in Ao-Tea,
Johannes Carl Anderson, 1907
Monarch Office, Pensacola
Mark spent the next eight hours reviewing Godzilla’s last known activities, all of which had happened years before. He had told Chloe that he thought Godzilla was mopping up the competition during that period, but maybe he’d been wrong about that. People tended to anthropomorphize animals and their actions, and it was possible that he and the rest of Monarch had fallen into that trap.
Mark had been there in Boston, after Godzilla—with the help of Mothra and the united military of the human race—had defeated Ghidorah.
There were still a lot of questions about that fight. The Titans seemed to be hierarchical in nature; they had a pecking order, and whichever one was strongest, whichever one came out on top, seemed to control the rest. Godzilla and the three-headed Gidorah had been battling for that top spot until the government made a bad call, overruling objections from Serizawa and other Monarch scientists. They had experimented with a weapon known as the Oxygen Destroyer, trying to wipe out Godzilla and Ghidorah with a single missile.
The missile had nearly killed Godzilla, and in fact at first they thought it had—but it hadn’t had any noticeable effect on Ghidorah, and Ghidorah had then proceeded to take command of more than a dozen Titans, many still in containment. The results were devastating, and it soon became clear that nothing in the human arsenal could stop Ghidorah, who seemed intent on stripping the world back down to its bedrock bones. Subsequent studies of Ghidorah’s DNA had suggested that the three-headed dragon was so genetically different from the other Titans—and life on Earth in general—that it might not even be a native of the planet. Mark doubted that; it seemed extreme to invoke an extraterrestrial origin when there was so much they still didn’t know about the evolution of any of the Titans. But for whatever reason, Ghidorah was different. While many of the Titans—Godzilla, Kong, Mothra, Behemoth—seemed to be dedicated to preserving some sort of global balance—part of a failsafe system to keep the environment from going too far off of the rails—Ghidorah was certainly not that. If it had been able to continue on its rampage, projections suggested that the only thing left alive on the planet at this point would be Ghidorah and certain bacteria.
But it had not succeeded; Godzilla had ended it, and soon after, more than half a dozen Titans, summoned by Ghidorah to kill Godzilla, had instead literally bowed down to him.
But that complete obeisance was short-lived; a few of the Titans had clearly had their fingers crossed behind their backs while they were bowing. Scylla, that truly weird chimera of arthropod and cephalopod, had attacked the coast of Georgia, apparently in an attempt to feed on an A-bomb that had been lost at sea there for decades. Godzilla had kicked Scylla so badly it had fled all the way down to an island near the tip of South America, where it had hibernated in a freezing lake. Behemoth, who had broken out of the containment center near Rio de Janeiro, had settled peacefully down in the Amazon, where its presence was clearly a healing influence on the human-ravaged rainforests there. When Behemoth was attacked by Amhuluk—another Titan that refused its Godzilla-mandated bedtime—the big lizard showed up and weighed in on that too, tipping the confrontation in favor of Behemoth. Then he had gone into the deep sea, reappearing to deal with a rogue human operation in the Sea of Okhotsk and freeing the octopus-like Titan Na Kika to return to her rest at the bottom of the sea.
And then, someplace in the South Pacific, Godzilla had vanished.
It was not the first time. It was well established by that point that Godzilla and other Titans could use parts of Hollow Earth to take short-cuts in their journeys. But this time Godzilla stayed away, out of sight, as he had been in the decades, and perhaps centuries, leading up to his appearance in 2014, when he had come from some deep hiding place to destroy the insectile MUTOs in their rampage from Japan to San Francisco. After that emergence, Monarch had been able to keep tabs on Godzilla, tracing a fairly stable pattern of patrol through the vast currents of the world’s oceans. He had briefly emerged to battle yet another MUTO, a fight Emma had been involved in, but other than that he had remained quiet, but visible, at least to Monarch.
But these last few years, nothing. Houston Brooks and Nathan Lind conjectured that Godzilla had returned to the deeps of Hollow Earth. It seemed to Mark as plausible an explanation as any, and as far as he was concerned, good riddance. Godzilla might have proven he was nominally an ally of humanity, but whatever his motivations, the collateral damage of any Titan contest was devastating. He no longer believed that the only good Titan was a dead Titan, but he certainly believed in letting sleeping Titans lie.
And now Godzilla was awake. That could not be good.
He spent most of the day confirming the status of the other Titans. A few, like Godzilla, had gone somewhere off the map, but most of them were right where they were supposed to be, according to Monarch surveillance. He could not rule out the possibility that one or more of the Titan locations had been compromised by terrorists, and that the surveillance data was misleading, but everyone he shouted out to came back with the right answers.
So he did the only other thing he could do—continued tracking the one Titan that was out there and on the go.
But off the coast of French Guiana, about seventy klicks east of the Îles du Salut, Godzilla vanished without a trace. The bioacoustic and radiation signatures just vanished, and the underwater drones tracking him at a distance also lost contact.
By that time, Chloe had come back in for the night watch. He thought she looked tired and disheveled; she had put her hair up in a band. He hadn’t seen her wear it like that before. He felt for her. He remembered his first experience with a Titan.
“That’s past the mouth of the Amazon,” she noted. “So he’s not likely checking in on Behemoth. Do you think he’s headed for Isla de Mara?”
“Nobody home there,” Mark said. “Unless Rodan laid eggs or something. Nothing left of the outpost. But there are still people in the area, so put it on the map. But at this point he could literally be going anywhere. I’m putting out an all-points bulletin, and then I’m going home. Call me if anything comes up, and I mean anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Chloe said.
* * *
The night passed peacefully, with no sign of the Titan. When he returned to work, Kennan was on duty. He was a tall, serious fellow around thirty who retained only a whisper of his native Jamaican accent.
By noon Mark was starting to believe he was being overly paranoid. The big fellah had come out of hibernation or whatever to stretch his legs a little, check on some old pals, and maybe now he was all tucked in again for another three years. Or ten. Or a thousand. He had almost turned his mind back to other projects when Kennan said something under his breath.
“What was that?” Mark asked.
“Look,” Kennan said. He was pointing to a video playing on his screen. It looked like it had been shot with a phone from a small watercraft of some kind. It showed an expanse of blue sea, and in the distance, what looked like a stony ridge rising from the water. Except that the ridge was moving, leaving a wake—and although shot from a considerable distance, there was hardly any doubt that the “ridge” was Godzilla’s dorsal fins.
“When was this?” he demanded.
“It was posted about twenty minutes ago,” Kennan said.
“Where?”
“It was taken from a yacht, the Ima Outahere,” Kennan said.
“Cute,” Mark said. “Where is she?”
“En route from Galveston to Veracruz,” he said.
“The Sigsbee Deep,” Mark said. “Deepest part of the Gulf.” That was spitting distance from Isla de Mara, so it looked like Chloe had been right.
“Headed west?” he said, to confirm the suspicion.
“The Ima reported him headed northeast,” Kennan said.
“Northeast? Bring up a chart.”
Kennan complied.
“If that’s true,” Mark said, studying the map, “He’s not going to Isla de Mara. If he is topside, we should be able to reestablish a fix. Set bioacoustics and radiation signature scans from the Deep to DeSoto Canyon and everything in between. Find him.”
“On it,” Kennan said.
* * *
It was six-thirty in the evening when they picked up the trail again; by then Godzilla was less than a hundred miles from the northern rim of the Gulf. Mark upgraded his message to command and control. By seven, they finally scrambled some jets from the nearby Naval Air Station and diverted nearby coastguard ships to have a closer look. Alarmed, Mark called command and control and was referred to a fellow named Clermont.
“Don’t let them engage,” Mark said. “Whatever you do. You know what he is capable of. I don’t know why he’s headed for the Gulf. It might be something inland. Do you guys have any other Titan activity, anywhere?”
“No,” the Monarch official, replied. “Nothing. What do you advise?”
“His path has been wobbling, like he’s triangulating on something,” Mark said. “Right now he could come ashore—if he comes ashore—anyplace between Biloxi and Panama City. We’ll know more in an hour or so. We should start evacuating everything in between.”
“That’s a lot of territory,” the man said. “I don’t think I can make that case. And as far as we know, Godzilla is still a friendly.”
“It doesn’t matter how friendly he is,” Mark said. “If he comes ashore, for any reason, he’s going to break things. Like buildings and highways. People are going to die.”
“Look,” Clermont said, “we’re doing what we can, for now. When he gets closer, if you still think he’s coming ashore, we’ll be ready. We’ve got relief staff on their way already.”
“Prevention is way better than relief,” Mark said.
“Look, most likely he’ll turn, right? We’re running projections, and none of them have him coming ashore. He’s avoiding human populations, just like he’s been doing for the last three years.”
“I think something’s changed,” Mark said. “I feel it in my gut. Something new is happening.”
“Just keep us updated,” Clermont replied. “And stay away from the press. The last thing we need at this point is a panic over nothing.”
What about a panic over something? Mark thought. But he knew when he was at the wall. Yet as the next hour passed, and then the next, it became clear that Godzilla was headed straight for Pensacola.
Why? Because there was a Monarch base here? Could the Titan somehow be aware they were tracking him? Maybe. Or at least he might have noticed the aircraft surveilling him, even if they were keeping their distance. Had Monarch escalated an innocent situation by putting things Godzilla recognized as weapons into play? Mark had seen that happen once, in the Monarch base near the Bahamas. Maybe if they called everything back… But Godzilla had been on his way here long before they sent out the jets. He was overthinking.
“Enough of this,” he said. He called Clermont back and told him that if he didn’t evacuate the waterfront, he would call the Federal Emergency Management Agency himself. The official made noises that sounded agreeable but didn’t really amount to much. Godzilla was now only twenty miles offshore and showing absolutely no signs of turning. If anything, the Titan was speeding up.
Mark took out his cell phone and called Madison.
It was sometimes possible for Madison to close her eyes and just sleep. But all too often what she saw on the back of her eyelids made that impossible. Ghidorah, stalking her, destroying the ball park around her. Scenes of mass carnage. Her mother, in the distance, Ghidorah stooping over her, ending the woman who had sung her to sleep at night, nurtured her, mentored her. The therapist her dad had sent her to had said it was post-traumatic stress disorder, and she figured he was right. She had seen monsters, a lot of them, up close and personal. And she had known monstrous people, who murdered without conscience. And for a time—a short time, but still far too long—she had been on the same side as them.
So maybe she was a little messed up. But she could not just give in to that. That could not be her identity. She refused to be a victim.
She sat up, looking around her room. Her command center. The many computers, the maps, the incident charts, the newspaper clippings.
Clearly this was going to be one of those nights when sleep would not come easily. She didn’t let it upset her anymore. If she occupied her mind with something else for a while, she could try again later. She had some homework; maybe she could turn her attention to that. Like most of her homework, it was just time-wasting drivel, guaranteed to bore her into unconsciousness.
Then she remembered. Mad Truth was about to drop his latest podcast.
She grabbed her phone and navigated to the site; saw he was uploading in four minutes. She went to the kitchen, filled a water bottle and returned to her bedroom. Her earbuds in, she took the pen and legal pad she kept by her bed for taking notes.
Mad Truth—also known as the Real Deal, Titan Truth, Weathervane, and Godzilla Watch—had a low, confident, and obviously digitally altered voice.
Hello, loyal listeners, welcome to TTP, Titan Truth Podcast episode 245. Today is the day. Maybe the last podcast I ever record. And look, I know I said that last week … and maybe a few other times, but the point is this—I’m sick of waiting for the right moment. Five years of deep cover at Apex Cybernetics is enough. I’m about to walk in and download hard evidence and expose a vast corporate conspiracy. If I walk out of this at all. And if this is my final broadcast, no regrets.
Madison listened intently, parsing every syllable. A lot of what Mad Truth said was a sort of code; if you hadn’t been following him from the start, you might not get half of it. She had all of his podcasts archived, so she could cross-reference them whenever she needed to.
She had been skeptical of him at first, and still was, to a point—maybe half or more of Mad Truth’s speculations were nonsense. But at the core of it—and especially when it came to the Titans—she thought he was probably on to something. Because she had been inside of a conspiracy, a big one. One that had almost destroyed the world, and her mother had been the architect of it. So, yes, she believed in such things. Like Mad Truth.
Don’t call me a whistleblower, he went on. I ain’t whistling. And this ain’t a leak, either, this is a flood. And you better believe I’m gonna wash away all of Apex’s lies. You can believe that.
She waited for more, but then realized he had signed off.
That was a short one, Madison thought. Too short, given how he liked to rattle on, building his case, piling up evidence until his conclusions made themselves. Maybe this time Mad Truth really was about to do what he had been planning all along, to go through with it. But he had said it himself, this wasn’t the first time he’d been right on the verge of blowing everything wide open, and so far, he had never followed through.
She sighed and put the phone in the charger. She wasn’t ready to sleep yet. Maybe it was time to see about that homework.
Then her phone rang. She saw it was her dad and rolled her eyes. Why did he always call when he was coming home late? Why couldn’t he just text like a normal person?
“What is it, Dad?” she answered. “I’m kind of busy here at the opium den.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s great, honey. But listen, I sent Jeanne—you remember Jeanne?”
“The Jeanne you work with? Seaman Baskin?”
“Yes. She’s coming over to give you a ride, okay?”
“A ride? Why? To where?”
“Look,” he said. “I can’t really explain over the phone. She’ll probably be there in about ten minutes. Grab whatever you need for an overnight.”
“Overnight? What’s going on?”
“Probably nothing,” he said. “I just want you here, with me, okay? I’ll feel better.”
“Well … okay,” she said.
“I love you, honey.”
“I love you too, Dad,” she said.
She put down the phone and started stuffing things into her duffel bag. The only place to sleep at her father’s work was in the bunkers underneath it. That could only mean one of three things: hurricane, tornado, or Titan. And it wasn’t a hurricane or a tornado, because a) the weather was clear, and b) Dad wouldn’t hesitate to mention either of those over the phone.
Shit, she thought. Mad Truth. Did this have something to do with him? With him going after Apex tonight? It was hard to believe it was a coincidence.
A few minutes later, Jeanne showed up, or rather, Seaman Baskin, part of the military detachment in the Pensacola office.
“Have they started evacuating the waterfront?” she asked Baskin.
Baskin frowned, clearly hesitant.
“Dad called,” Madison said. It wasn’t a lie.
“Oh, so you know, then,” Baskin said. “Don’t be scared. You’ll be safe where we’re going. And your dad sent someone for your aunt.”
“Which one is it?” Madison asked. “Scylla? Rodan?”
“No,” Baskin said. Then she got it. “You didn’t know, did you? You tricked me.”
“Dad wouldn’t say over the phone,” she said. “But I’m not an idiot.”
“No, that would be me,” Baskin said. “But I guess it’s too late now. No, it’s the big one. Godzilla.”
“That can’t be right,” Madison said. “Godzilla doesn’t attack for no reason. One of the others must be near.”
“If they are, I haven’t heard about it,” Baskin said. “And I sincerely hope you’re wrong. One of these things is plenty for me.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Madison said. “Whatever he’s doing, he didn’t come here to hurt us. Or anyone. You’ll see.”