Project Maigo(60)

There is Scylla, who first appeared in Sydney and worked its way along Australia’s southern coast. It’s a sharp-toothed monstrosity with a hammerhead. I named the second Kaiju to emerge from the ocean, Karkinos, one of the two monsters who attacked the port of Hong Kong. In many ways, it resembles Nemesis. The spikes. The long tail. But the eyes are all wrong, and the claws on its hands have fused together, forming two large blades, like serrated shears. It’s the third Kaiju, Typhon, that really freaks me out. It stands tall on two legs. Like a man...a man dressed in Nemesis skin: spikes, carapace and all. Not only is it powerful, but in the video footage, it appears to think before acting. Considering strategies. While the others seem to be all instinct, Typhon has a brain. The fourth Kaiju, Drakon, the svelte lizard-like monster, hasn’t been seen since it rescued Gordon in Rockport.

While Nemesis is nowhere in sight, Scylla made its way around Australia’s southern coast and then disappeared. Typhon and Karkinos left a path of destruction along China’s and Vietnam’s coasts before stomping across Thailand’s peninsula and disappearing into the Bay of Bengal. They made a brief stopover in Sri Lanka before showing up in Madagascar, and then again in Cape Town, South Africa. The duo sometimes attack separately. Sometimes together. But they’re clearly travel-buddies.

And like Nemesis, they seem to be fairly unstoppable. The response to their journey has been global, with militaries from different regions joining to fend off the threat. Each time the Kaiju have moved on, it’s been hailed as a victory. A retreat. But I don’t think that’s the case at all. The creatures are simply stopping in for a bite to eat while they head west.

Despite the appearance of five new Kaiju and Gordon’s assault on the FC-P, my superiors refuse to believe that a traitorous general, who is supposed to be dead, is influencing or directing the monsters. I agree that it sounds unlikely, but unlikely is pretty much the new norm. So while they’ve been knee-jerk reacting to the situations as they arise, I’ve been trying to get into Gordon’s mind. Not literally. Endo demonstrated the folly of that idea.

Assuming Gordon is in control, what does he want? Vengeance. Naturally. What else would a man who received a heart transplant from the goddess of vengeance want?

But vengeance on who?

“What was Gordon like before all this?” I ask.

Endo turns from the TV to me. He’s been watching cartoons, of all things, which is far more bearable than The Golden Girls. After watching an episode of Dexter’s Laboratory, we’d jokingly discussed the possibility of constructing a giant robot to fight the Kaiju. While that works for cartoons and men in rubber suits, the physics of building a suit that large, makes it impossible. Which kind of sucks, because it would be awesome.

“I didn’t know him before,” Endo says. “We met after I discovered the Nemesis-Prime corpse.”

“Did he ever express anger at anyone?” I ask.

Endo grins. “At everyone.”

“From his past,” I say. “A wife. A bully. Co-worker? Someone he really hated.”

Endo falls silent, biting his thumbnail, a habit he picked up a few days ago. It’s how I know he’s really thinking about something. He probably won’t emerge from his mental filing cabinet for a few minutes, so I pick up the remote and change the channel.

My mind drifts as I push the button. I’m no longer seeing the TV, but am thinking about life. Specifically, my life. Endo and I are scheduled to leave in the morning. We’re ‘out of the woods,’ according to the doctor. I’m pretty sure we were never actually in the woods, but I suspect Collins threatened the doctor to hold us here longer than normal on the grounds that we’d only exacerbate our injuries by returning to work.

And she’d have been right about that. Sitting in this bed is nearly intolerable. The one thing that has kept me obeying the doctor is the fact that there is nothing I can do about the Kaiju attacking other countries. I can’t command their militaries or even advise their governments. For all I know, they’ve all got their own versions of the FC-P working on the problem. Had a Kaiju made landfall on U.S. soil, I’d have been up and out of bed, doctor’s orders or not. Also, the pudding helps.

Something snaps me back to reality. I blink my eyes while my mind rewinds for me. The TV. A news report. Shaky video. I switch channels again, heading in the opposite direction. I stop after three pushes of the button. It’s a news network. A close up of Karkinos fills the screen. There’s no sound, but the upturned head and open maw tell me it’s roaring. The image pulls back to reveal a packed city and a tropical coastline. The scene is dark, the sun cloaked by a tropical storm. I glance down at the news channel’s image label: Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.