The ancestors lived in a subterranean, dreadful realm
The ancestors left that underground, terrible realm
All came out.
On a path of beautiful water they departed the deep and horrible realm.
—a legend of the Guayaki, indigenous people of Paraguay and Brazil
In 1882 Telêmaco Borba collected the origin story of the Kaingáng People of Southeast Brazil. Like many other indigenous people of the region—and around the world—they believed their people had emerged from below the surface of the Earth. Twin brothers—Kamé and Kairu—then divided up everything in the world between them; every plant, animal, social division, and so forth were either Kamé or Kairu. The sun, for instance, was Kamé, while the Moon was Kairu. Kamé made jaguars and Kairu made snakes.
Lizards, it was said, were from Kamé. Monkeys from Kairu.
—from the notebook of Dr. Chen
Hampton drained the remaining coffee in her cup.
She wasn’t fond of coffee. She’d started drinking it in grad school to stay awake, always with tons of cream and sugar, but she’d never actually developed a taste for it. She thought of it more like medicine than a beverage. But right now, it was medicine she needed. Even with four cups in her, she found herself nodding off as she scanned the monitors.
“How’s the prep for Hollow Earth going?” she asked Laurier, more to stay awake than for the answer.
“The vortex keeps fluctuating,” Laurier said. “It doesn’t seem to be entirely stable.”
“Do we know why?”
“Maybe because of the vortex opening in Egypt. The membrane is all of a piece. When mass passes through it, it affects the whole thing. We’ve never seen anything quite like this.” She paused. “We’re also getting some weird gravitometric data.”
“Specifically?”
“Flux in the Earth’s gravity.”
“What? How big?”
“Not big at all, globally. Nothing anyone would notice without the right equipment. But it suggests some localized event which might be pretty intense. Like if you drop a rock in a pond. We’re far from where the rock was dropped, so we see only the tiniest ripples. But at the source—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Hampton said. “And that probably relates to what’s going on with the vortices, too, right.”
“Maybe,” Laurier said, cautiously.
“No, absolutely,” Hampton said. “Crank up the sensitivity of our sensors. If there’s even a slight variation in the membrane anywhere on the planet, I want to know when and where immediately. And I want fast reaction forces prepped and manned. That means butts in jets, Ospreys, ships—not near them, in them. At all locales. Something comes through a vortex, I want us there before yesterday.”
* * *
Hampton sighed and lay back, feeling the sun on her skin. It was such a relief to finally be able to get some sleep, to relax, have a drink.
She reached for her glass without opening her eyes, found the straw with her mouth and took a long sip.
It tasted horrible. Like coffee. Shit, it was coffee. And cold at that.
“Director?” someone said. “Director, something’s happening.”
“What?” Her eyes snapped open, not to tropical sunlight, but to screens and displays.
“Ah, dammit,” she groaned. “What? How long was I…”
“Only a few minutes,” Laurier said. “But the enhanced scan you asked for—it’ s turned up something.”
“What? Where?”
“Brazil. Rio de Janeiro. Or more specifically, Guanabara Bay.”
“Great,” Hampton said. “Perfect. Do we have eyes there?”
“Yes, we do,” Laurier said. “There’s still a small team in the old Tingua Preserve containment area, where Behemoth was, back when. Observation capacity only, but they do have some drones. They’re already in the air.” She gestured as four screens came up, Rio and the bay beyond from several different directions.
“Is there anything there yet?” she asked.
“No. But it looks like a vortex is about to open.”
For the moment, Hampton might have been looking at a travel advert for Rio, detailing the famous views. A long, beautiful beach filled with sunbathers and wave-frolickers, Sugarloaf Peak rising from the foot of the bay, the iconic Cristo Redentor, his upraised arms blessing the city from atop Mount Corcovado. The fourth view was above the bay, looking straight down from about six thousand feet. From that view, she could see a perfect circle out in the Bay that looked different from the surrounding water. Brighter. And very still. No waves or swells as in the surrounding sea. It was obviously a vortex, but… weird.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Ice,” Laurier replied.
“Ice?”
“The ocean temperature right there is plunging.”
“That’s not normal, even for a vortex. Not that I’ve ever heard of.”
“No,” Laurier replied. “Me either.”
The frozen spot flickered brighter, and then erupted in a spray of shattered ice, as a gigantic form—no, two forms—burst up through it. One was nearly the color of ice, thick in every dimension. The other was smaller, lankier, all arms and legs and a dull red color.
“Bioelectric signatures—” Laurier began.
“Let me guess. Off the charts.”
“Way off.”
The big one landed back in the bay, the red one crash-landed on the beach, plowing a Titan-sized rut through the sand. The thousands of beachgoers were already streaming away in every direction.
Poor Rio. It seemed like just yesterday when Behemoth had trashed half the city. They had only just finished rebuilding. Now they had two more Titans showing up out of nowhere.
“Two unknown Titans, to boot,” she muttered aloud. “Anyone got a profile on either of these?”
“Not in our database,” Laurier said. “Although that one sort of looks like Kong.”
One of the drones was closer to him now. Laurier was right; it certainly was not Kong, but it was very Great-Ape looking. The red color was its fur. It had lifted itself to stand and was staring up curiously at the sky, blocking the sun with one long-fingered hand. Then its eyes fastened briefly on the drone, and she shivered at the awful glower in its pale blue eyes. Its mouth stretched in what might be glee, although she knew that with most Great Apes that expression was actually a threat.
If Red was roughly the size of Kong, the other thing was far, far bigger.
“The dragon-looking one? What the hell is that?”
“It’s bigger than any Titan on record,” Laurier said. “We’ve got nothing matching it in our database. But… uh… it’s cold.”
Hampton could see it better now, too. A sort of four-legged dragon turtle thing. Still in the water, ice was forming around it and spreading at an alarming rate, especially given how warm it was in Rio.
Red had some sort of whip wrapped around him. It looked to be made of the vertebrae of a very, very long snake. He unwrapped it from his torso by the small end, which terminated in what looked like a glowing, ice-blue crystal. He howled and pointed the crystal at turtle-dragon.
The bigger Titan responded immediately. It opened its beaked mouth, pointed it at the sky. A lance of white energy struck upward. The effect was nearly instantaneous; clouds began to condense around the beam, spreading to block the sun. Shadow fell across the bay.
“Did that ape—did he just tell the other thing to do that?” Laurier asked.
“Maybe?” Hampton said. But something had been creeping up in her from the back of her brain. “Oh, shit,” she said. “I think I know what that is. That’s the Hypothetical.”
“What?” Laurier asked.
In response, Hampton entered a passcode and navigated through the menu on her computer. She found the file and clicked on it.
“Yeah,” she said, reading through the entry. “This is suboptimal.”
Laurier peered over her shoulder. “Is that a cave painting?”
“Yeah, see? Godzilla and something else.” She pointed at the new Titan on the monitors. “That something else.”
“What is it?”
“We call it the Hypothetical,” she said. “We’ve been piecing little bits and pieces together about this thing for years. We hoped she wasn’t real, or that she died long ago. No such luck, I guess.”
“She?”
“We call her she. A lot of the myths that might be based on her had her as a female. But who knows?”
“What do we know about her, then?”
“Put it this way,” Hampton said. “You can stop worrying about global warming.”
The sky continued to darken and the circle of ice on the bay expanded. Then the Hypothetical dropped her… cold breath? level to the ground and swept it across the city. In an instant, the nearest buildings were sheathed in ice.
“Yeah,” Hampton said. “This is really worrying.”
“Incoming,” Laurier said. “Two more signatures.”
“Of course,” Hampton said, as another Titan splintered through the ice. “At least we know this one.”
Kong.
The big ape didn’t waste any time getting his bearings. He recovered from the gravity reversal and charged straight at Red, who never even saw him coming. As Kong swung a haymaker at Red, Hampton noticed that he was wearing something on his arm, like a brace—no, wait, she knew this. An augmentation. Project Powerhouse. Sure, why not?
She saw Senate hearings in her near future. Assuming any of them survived all of this.
“Strike force?” she asked Laurier.
“On the way. But the nearest is almost two hours out.”
“Brazilian military?”
“They took a big hit from Behemoth a few years back. There’s some chatter about scrambling fighters, but we don’t have anything on radar yet.”
The Hypothetical abruptly shot up out of the water as something violently shot up from beneath her. As the spray cleared, Hampton identified the familiar silhouette of Godzilla.
“Inform the local military of what they’re up against,” Hampton said. “Advise they wait for our assistance and focus their efforts on evacuating Rio. If they push back, put me on the line with them. Tell them Godzilla is here now. As the man once said: ‘let them fight.’ ’Cause we really don’t have a choice.”
No worries about that, though. They were certainly fighting. The question was, how much of a tussle could Rio stand?
Red staggered back from Kong’s strike. He spit out a tooth, which bounced and smashed through a storefront.
Godzilla put his head down and hit Hypothetical like a bull, sending them both crashing through the buildings along the waterfront and in the city proper.
Meanwhile, it had begun to snow. In Rio.
One-Eye yanked Suko’s leg. Whether the larger ape was trying to use him to climb up or pull him to his death, Suko wasn’t sure. And it didn’t matter. It was going to end up the same. He turned and locked gazes with the bigger ape. One-Eye glared back, nothing but malice in his stare. Suko grinned back fiercely. I’m not afraid of you.
Suko cocked back his other leg and kicked One-Eye in the face as hard as he could.
And One-Eye fell. He fell a very long way.
Suko watched for a few heartbeats to make sure he was really gone, that the broken body far below did not rise again. Then he looked up, where Kong and the others had vanished into a blue hole. He started climbing.
* * *
Kong and Red had taken to the skyscrapers, using them to swing into and away from each other. It wasn’t exactly elegant, but there was more finesse involved than the brawl going on between the two reptilian opponents.
Red swung around a building, lashing at Kong with the whip, but Kong evaded it, leaped feet first and kicked Red in the chest, knocking him supine. Kong jumped high, coming down on Red with a double-fisted blow, but before he could land it, Hypothetical’s tail slapped him away.
There’s got to be something better to call this thing, Hampton thought. “Hypothetical” was unwieldy.
As Kong struggled to stand, the Ice Dragon—no, strike that, Hampton didn’t like that name either—charged straight at the Great Ape. But this time it was Godzilla who came to the rescue, tackling the four-legged monster before she could take a bite out of Kong.
“Well, I guess we see what the teams are,” Hampton said.
Godzilla and Hypothetical rolled through the city, a pair of juggernauts flattening everything in their path.
But, maybe for the first time, Godzilla was a middleweight fighter in a heavyweight brawl. The larger Titan flung Godzilla halfway across Rio. When he crashed to a stop, he lay still.
Impossible, Hampton thought. Was Godzilla stunned? Injured? Either way, he was vulnerable, wasn’t he? But the Ice Monster—nah, not that either—didn’t stop to savage her fallen foe. Instead she went banging back toward Red and Kong.
Red used his bone lash like a bullwhip, wrapped it around a skyscraper, tearing a several-story chunk of it loose, hurling the wreckage at Kong with another deft turn of his arm. Kong punched through it using the augmented arm he absolutely was not supposed to have. Red stepped through the cloud of debris, flung out one of his unreasonably long legs, and kicked Kong in the chest. Kong backpedaled, trying to keep his balance, straight into Hypothetical, who promptly snapped her toothy beak at Kong. Kong managed to make the bite land on his enhancement, so the ice Titan didn’t shear through his flesh and bone, but the World Ender had an unshakable grip. It reminded Hampton of an alligator snapping turtle. She’d once heard if one clamped on you it wouldn’t let go until the next time lightning struck. Who had told her that?
It didn’t matter. Monster H—yeah, that was better, not as cumbersome as “Hypothetical” and a nod to Monster Zero—scrubbed Kong across the pavement on his face, used him to shatter a few buildings, then began whirling him around in a circle before throwing him a few hundred yards to fetch up against more high-rises.
As he was getting up, Monster H opened her mouth, and the now-familiar white beam speared out.
“I think you’re right, Director,” Laurier said. “The red ape. He’s controlling the big one somehow.”
Hampton saw what she meant. Red was looking on. Almost like he was gloating. Or laughing. She saw the blue crystal on his whip again, and realized it looked a lot like the spines sticking out all over Monster H.
Kong pushed his augmented arm into the beam, using it as a shield. It seemed to work—he at least wasn’t covered in ice yet.
Kong slowly began to press forward against Monster H’s freezing breath.
“Get ’im,” Hampton said. But if Monster H had bested Godzilla, what chance did Kong have?
“Wow,” Laurier said. “Look at that.”
“What?” Hampton asked. Then she saw Godzilla towering up from the wreckage. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “He’s up. Thank God for that.”
“He’s not just up,” Laurier said. “Something is happening. His energy signature—all that radiation he’s been storing up—nobody has ever seen readings like these.” Hampton saw it now, even without instruments. Godzilla’s new fuschia glow was building up from his tail, setting his entire body ablaze with barely contained energy. His eyes were twin stars, weeping glowing nebulae. All the hairs on Hampton’s neck pricked up.
“Yeah,” she said. “No one has ever seen this, period.”
Godzilla reached his forelimbs wide, and for a moment Hampton feared an explosion, like the one the Titan had released in Boston.
Instead, radiation jetted from his open mouth, brighter, stronger than ever before, boring through the air in a corkscrew pattern, straight toward Red. At the last instant Red noticed and dove frantically away, tumbling through a few buildings before leaping back up and snapping his bone whip at Godzilla.
Godzilla, still visibly burning with power, didn’t try to dodge. He didn’t try to block the blow. He caught the lash between his powerful jaws, right near the end, where the blue crystal was. With a jerk of his head, he pulled Red off his feet and began to whirl him around. Red clung to the whip as if he couldn’t let it go, despite the beating he was taking. But finally he could hold on no longer, and the centrifugal force sent him careening through downtown Rio.
Hampton winced again at the destruction, hoping most of the buildings were empty by now. At this rate she was going to develop a tic before the fight was over.
“Look!” Laurier said.
Red pulled himself from the rubble, turning his gaze frantically until it fell on the shard. He ran toward it.
“That is it,” Hampton said. “He needs that to control Monster H.”
Godzilla seemed to have figured that out as well, sending his blazing breath at the red ape—forcing him to dodge away from the shard, clamber over buildings, and leap from roof to roof to avoid Godzilla’s attack. He tumbled across the broken city and came up next to the blue crystal, snatching it up and holding it up high, a triumphant sneer on his face.
Until Godzilla’s atomic breath struck his hand and sent the shard flying once more.
With a roar, Red went after it.
* * *
Kong pushed his way toward Shimo; the cold was starting to seep through his yellow arm. But without it he knew from experience it would be much, much colder. He remembered the awful pain well, the surprise. But he also remembered that Shimo had been in pain. She was in agony now, he could tell. But he didn’t know how to stop her pain, so he would have to stop her. If he didn’t, she would kill him.
Godzilla had just knocked the blue crystal from the Skar King’s hand. Kong remembered how the Skar King kept Shimo chained. Why did she do what the Skar King said? She hated him. And she was far more powerful than him.
Was the shard part of her? It looked like it. Is that how the Skar King caused her pain?
But right now, the Skar King didn’t have the shard. He could not tell her what to do. But Shimo didn’t know that.
If Shimo froze him, though, it wouldn’t matter. He grunted and pushed forward, ignoring the cold, closer and closer to the other Titan, until they were nearly eye to eye. He was sure, then. She was trying to stop whatever was hurting her. She didn’t care about Kong; he was just in her way.
He forced his yellow arm into her mouth, shivering as the cold finally began creeping up his arm. Then he boxed her with all the strength he could find in his other arm. Her head snapped back. The cold stopped.
Godzilla almost seemed to be grinning. As Shimo stumbled from Kong’s punch, the Titan blew out his burning wind, striking her in the head. Then he rushed forward and slammed into Shimo. The two Titans rolled off though the city.
Kong looked back to where the Skar King had dropped the shard. Maybe if he had it, if he could show Shimo that the pain would end, she would stop fighting.
Behind him, he heard the thunder of titanic feet as the Skar King arrived. Kong glared at him and realized those blue eyes were staring past him, at the shard.
Kong leaped forward, toward the blue sliver. But the Skar King was fast, and caught his legs so he belly-flopped on the ground. Kong howled in rage and pulled himself forward, but the Skar King drew himself up Kong’s back and wrapped one long arm around Kong’s windpipe. Kong’s breath rasped in his throat as he struggled forward. Godzilla and Shimo were still locked in battle, but Kong had a bad feeling about it. Godzilla was strong, the strongest thing that Kong had ever fought—until now. Shimo was stronger.
He dug his fingers into the earth, but he couldn’t break the Skar King’s grip. The edges of his vision were starting to fade.
He thought he heard a hoot-call, a familiar voice. He thought he heard Suko. But that was impossible. Suko was safe, hiding back in the Iwi territory. Wasn’t he?
No. Suko was here, running toward them, carrying something—Kong’s axe.
Kong tried to roar, but his breath was cut off. Suko cocked the axe back over his head—it was nearly as big as he was—and he chopped straight down into the ground.
No, not the ground. The blue crystal.
* * *
“Kong’s figured it out,” Hampton said. “He’s going for the shard.”
Godzilla and Monster H were still wrestling. In his supercharged state Godzilla was doing better, but it still seemed like a toss-up to Hampton. Before Kong could reach his destination, Red grabbed him from behind and got him in a sleeper hold.
“There’s a fifth signature,” Laurier announced. “It came through a few minutes ago. It’s a smaller spike, so I didn’t notice it at first.”
“Another one,” Hampton said. “This is turning into a real party.” What would it be? A lobster Titan? A colossal crab, maybe? Apparently, everything eventually evolved into crabs.
But she didn’t see anything on the screens.
“There,” Laurier said.
“You’re right,” Hampton said. “That is little. Comparatively, I mean. Must be on our side. Magnify that.”
The view zoomed in.
“Is that a mini-Kong?” she wondered. “Wait, is that Kong’s axe?”
The words were hardly out her mouth when the small ape swung the axe. Right down onto the shard.
The detonation was a hemisphere of blue energy, quickly expanding with incredible force. It swept Red from his feet and sent Godzilla and Monster H hurtling in different directions. Kong, already on the ground, skidded back across the asphalt. The remains of nearby buildings flattened like sandcastles hit by an incoming wave.
And for just a second, everything was almost still.