Godzilla E-Book

Greg Keyes

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The official novelization of the summer blockbuster Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the latest film in the MonsterverseTM franchise, starring Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, with Ken Watanabe and Ziyi Zhang. Godzilla: King of the Monsters follows the heroic efforts of the cryptozoological agency Monarch as its members face off against a battery of god-sized monsters, including the mighty Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan, and its ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah. When these ancient super-species—thought to be mere myths—rise again, they all vie for supremacy, leaving humanity's very existence hanging in the balance.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Epilogue

About the Author

Acknowledgments

NOVELIZATION BY GREG KEYES

BASED UPON THE SCREENPLAY BY MICHAEL DOUGHERTY & ZACH SHIELDSSTORY BY MAX BORENSTEIN AND MICHAEL DOUGHERTY & ZACH SHIELDSBASED ON THE CHARACTERS “GODZILLA,” “KING GHIDORAH,” “MOTHRA”AND “RODAN” OWNED AND CREATED BY TOHO CO., LTD.

TITAN BOOKS

GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS – THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION

Print edition ISBN: 9781789090925

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789090932

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: May 2019

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents eitherare the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, andany resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have anycontrol over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2019 Legendary. All Rights Reserved.

TM & © TOHO CO., LTD.

MONSTERVERSE TM & © Legendary.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior writtenpermission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form ofbinding or cover other than that in which it is published and without asimilar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To Gwen Campbell

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second ComingWilliam Butler Yeats

PROLOGUE

THE DEPTHS

He woke, and he prowled his territory.

He was in no hurry. He wasn’t hungry, only smelling, seeing – listening.

The depths were not silent.

The deepest sound was time; the steady, slow grind of the earth, the slipping of stone under stone. He heard this not with his ears but through his bones. It was loudest in the hot places where he fed and rested, but it was everywhere, the background against which all other sounds existed. Sometimes it grew sharper when the earth cracked, and the heat came out, bearing sustenance.

Quicker were the songs of the tides, which were nowhere the same. He knew each contour of the continents by the sound of their tides, moving in and out like breath. Even in deep ocean, no two trenches or seamounts sounded the same as the surface swelled and sank above them.

Smaller and swifter still, the clicks, the low and high calls of the great swimmers, the high-pitched pipping of the smaller ones, the grunts, whistles, chirps of life.

The sea was never silent.

But it had been quieter, before strange sounds invaded the ocean; the churning and banging and screeching of unliving things that left the smell of oil behind them. The great swimmers could no longer hear each other well. Sometimes they lost their way, could not find each other. Over the ages, the sounds of the sea had changed, but never so much, and never so quickly.

Now there was a new song. It pulsed through the deeps, faint, but unmistakable. The voice of something in his territory that should not be there.

ONE

As usual, Emma woke before the alarm sounded. Her restless mind rarely allowed her the benefit of a full night’s sleep, and today was shaping up to be an exciting one. She’d put in a long night, but it had been worth it. She stayed in bed a few more minutes, going over her plans for the day.

She rose, showered, brushed her teeth, combed out her long auburn hair, dressed. She turned on the television, flipped through a few channels, but didn’t hear anything she didn’t already know. She paused, however, when she came to the BWN. It showed a senate hearing. Serizawa and Graham were there, looking beleaguered. She remembered a similar inquiry, five years ago, with her in the hot seat. She didn’t envy the two scientists.

“Top brass at the mysterious Monarch organization will face another intense grilling as the government continues to push for extermination of the Titans,” the anchor was saying, “and rumors persist that Monarch may be hiding even more creatures discovered since the attacks of 2014, a historic tragedy that changed the world as we know it forever. The day the world discovered that monsters are real…”

* * *

Some people had known there were monsters in the world for many years. Generations. But mostly the monsters slept or lurked in remote corners of the planet. They kept to themselves. They were watched, and in some cases contained – by Monarch. But five years ago, when a monster broke free from containment in Japan and charted a path of destruction from Japan, through Honolulu and finally San Francisco, the fact that monsters were real became very public knowledge. The world learned of Godzilla.

Thousands died in a few days. Once great cities lay in ruins. When it was over, two MUTOs – Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms – lay dead, killed by Godzilla. And when the fight was over the wounded Godzilla dragged himself into the ocean and vanished.

A few months later he reappeared to fight another MUTO, this time in more remote places with less damage and fewer collateral deaths. Then he once more returned to the deeps.

For five years, humanity had lived in fear of another attack. The housing market crashed as the value of waterfront property plummeted. Schoolchildren drilled to evacuate in case of a monster attack.

As the monsters’ existence came to light, so did Monarch. Scientists from the organization were called before various government bodies and questioned at length about their intentions and methods. In the years since the attacks, intelligence agencies and investigative reporters had come to believe that Godzilla and the MUTOs weren’t the only monsters out there. That there might be more. Many more.

Emma turned her gaze from the screen and down to a hard black plastic case on the floor.

It’s going to work, she thought. I know it will. But if she was sure, why was she so nervous?

She turned the TV off, and heard a piercing noise from the next room.

“Maddie?” she said.

* * *

Madison pushed some of the schoolbooks on the kitchen table aside to make room for her sticker-plastered laptop, put in her earbuds and scrolled through her email as the Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation” began hammering at her eardrums.

As usual, more than half of the emails were from Dad. That wasn’t all that surprising; she didn’t have many friends and even less family, outside of Mom and Dad. Neither did Dad, at least not anymore, which probably explained why he wrote her at least once a day, and often more, despite the fact that it had been a long time since she’d answered him. She hadn’t even opened the most recent ones.

She wasn’t entirely sure why. There was Mom, of course, and what she would think. And she had her own misgivings. But he was so persistent, and she did miss him, a lot. She had a clear picture of him in her mind, sending the mail, checking for her response and finding nothing. The look of disappointment on his face.

Mom might not understand, but Maddie was sure he was different now. Maybe not all the way back to his old self, but better, way better.

She let out a breath and clicked on the most recent mail.

Hey Madison, it read, haven’t heard from you guys in a few months. Hope you’re having fun. Here are a few pics of the wolves I’ve been studying. Aren’t they cute?

Of course, she loved the wolves. He knew that. Like everything wild and pure, they appealed to her in a way so deep and strong she couldn’t explain it out loud. And the pups were really cute. But she was also a little jealous of them. Dad was always out in the wilderness, in Colorado. With the wolves. And although she knew it was more complicated than that, it still left a hollow in her gut that boiled down to this: why could he be there for the wolves, but not for her?

But of course, when he was around, the tug-of-war always started again, with her as the rope.

Among the pictures was one selfie. Dad had a little more gray in his brown hair than when she had last seen him. He was attempting to look silly and doing a pretty good job of it. It made her think of better times, the games they had played together. He was trying to reconnect with her. So maybe she should try, too.

She hit reply and placed her fingers on the keyboard, trying to think how to start.

Maybe just the basics.

Sorry I haven’t written back, she began. I miss you. But there’s something I want to talk to you about.

Again she paused, glancing nervously at her mother’s room. How much should she tell him? Nothing, if Mom had anything to say about it. Dad wasn’t supposed to be involved in any of this anymore. But it was so big, what was happening, so important. He shouldn’t be completely out of the loop.

I’m getting worried about Mom—she began.

And then the smoke detector started its shrill beeping.

“Oh, shit, shit, shit,” she yelped, bolting up. She had forgotten. Why hadn’t she smelled it?

But she did now, as smoke boiled up from the pan of burning bacon, filling the tiny kitchen with a gray haze and the smell of ruined porky goodness. She yanked it off the stove, but it was way too late. The rashers were now just strips of charcoal.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mom enter the kitchen. Of course.

Shit, again, she thought. This place was way too small to get away with anything.

“Maddie?” Mom said.

Her mother – Dr. Emma Russell – was a paleobiologist. These days, that was one of the coolest jobs around. But paleobiology was a lot like detective work, or forensics – deducing the big picture from the little things.

Which meant it was hard to pull anything over on her.

“Good morning!” she blurted as she scrambled to turn off the smoke alarm. “Mom! Hi! I made us breakfast.”

“Oh, God,” Mom said, and hurried to help her with the mess.

“It’s eggs, toast, and what was once… bacon.”

Her mom smiled. “And which do you recommend?”

“The toast and eggs,” she said, with a chuckle.

“Thank you,” Mom said, turning to the counter and sitting down. She glanced at the open laptop.

Maddie reached over and pushed it closed, trying to look casual.

Okay, she thought, that didn’t look suspicious at all.

“Coffee?” she asked, pouring a cup.

“What were you working on?” her mom asked.

“Nothing,” Madison lied, putting the plates on the table. “Just looking up recipes.”

Before she even finished the sentence, she saw her mother didn’t buy it. Of course she didn’t.

She sat and poked at her eggs, trying to find the right spin on it.

“Dad’s been emailing me,” she admitted, finally.

Alarm and consternation flitted across her mother’s face, quickly replaced by a carefully neutral expression. She was trying not to freak out. And as usual, doing a pretty good job, at least on the outside. And she was still listening, which was good.

“He looks good,” Maddie said. “Healthy.”

“Have you responded?” Mom asked.

“Not yet,” she said. She took a bite of her eggs. Now Mom was trying to find the tactful response. It was strange; they were so tight on most things. They didn’t argue a lot, and it was very seldom things got awkward between them.

But the subject of Dad never failed to make them both uncomfortable.

“Honey,” her mother began, “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I know.”

“Especially with everything that’s going on right now.”

But that was just the thing. A lot was going on, and maybe Dad should know. He deserved to know. But she knew she couldn’t say that to Mom.

“Mom, I know,” she said instead. “Really.”

For a moment her mother was silent.

“Listen,” she said finally, in a softer voice. “I know things haven’t been easy for you, but we’re gonna get through this. Together.”

She thought of Dad, in Colorado, with the wolves. And years ago, when everything had seemed fine – and wasn’t. It was hard to trust that kind of promise. No one knew for sure what was going to happen even in the next few minutes, much less a year from now, or more. Not even her mother.

“You’re sure he’s gonna be okay?” she pressed.

“He’s in the safest place he can be right now,” her mother assured her. Then she perked up a little.

“Hey, wanna hear some good news? I finished it.”

For a split second, Madison didn’t know what she meant. But then she saw the metal case. The ORCA.

“Really?”

Her mother nodded, unable to suppress a beam of pride. And why shouldn’t she be proud? She had been working her ass off on it for years. She even remembered her and Dad tinkering with it a little, way back when. But these past few months the ORCA had seen more of Mom than she had. But that was okay. This was exciting. This was everything, really. It was going to change the world.

“You think it’s going to work?” she asked.

Mom stood up and lifted the case.

“It’s going to work,” she said.

A low, grating rumble shivered the room. The lights went out, flickered back on, dimmed, and came back up again. A high-pitched shriek cut through the nearly subsonic growl. It sounded like nothing Maddie had ever heard before – and living with Mom, she had heard some awfully weird things.

Mom went to the window, frowning, eyes wide and lips pulled tight. Maddie joined her.

“It’s going to be okay,” Maddie said.

Mom put her arm around her.

Her two-way radio crackled on.

“Dr. Russell,” a man’s voice said. “We need you in containment.”

Her mother seemed a little disoriented, but then she looked at Madison and her composure returned.

“On my way,” she said. She put on her jacket and picked up her boots.

Maddie grabbed her own muddy boots. She already had her hoodie on. Good to go.

Mom shot her a questioning glance.

“You’re kidding,” Maddie said. “Of course I’m going.”

Mom’s only answer was a proud smile. Then she picked up the ORCA and they went outside.

* * *

Inside, their quarters could have been anywhere. Her mom had tried to make them as “normal” as possible. But once you went outside – or even looked out the window – the illusion was broken. Their apartment was a temporary barracks, a neat little prefab house, L-shaped, with solar panels on the roof. It sat on a forested hill looking down on a compound of similar structures – a sort of fancy trailer court surrounded by a chain-link fence. A couple of watchtowers kept vigil over the compound, and satellite dishes maintained their connection with the rest of the world, at least as much contact as Monarch protocols allowed.

Outside, the cool damp air smelled of decay, freshly turned earth, tropical flowers, bruised leaves, and something faintly metallic. Council trees with thickly buttressed trunks rose up through a lower canopy of tropical evergreens and climbing vines, their little piece of the highland rainforest that filled the valley and spread into the surrounding mountains. Monkeys, gibbons, more birds than she could identify even with the help of the Internet variously flew, climbed or swung through the dense branches. And insects – so many strange, fascinating species. Once she had seen a walking stick half a foot long. She’d thought that was impressive, at the time.

But as amazing as all that was, the “site” was much cooler.

Surrounded by lush, green mountains, from the camp it looked something like a mountain itself, although on second look it was too regular. Beneath an encrustation of climbing vines, lianas, ferns, and creepers, a gigantic four-sided pyramid rose in steps, eight in all. It resembled the Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico and the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia, but it also shared some features with the hundreds of ancient temples scattered around China and Southeast Asia. But the archaeologists said this one was different. From what they said, it was far older than any of the better-known ruins. Dr. Lille, one of the epigraphers on the team, once told Maddie the glyphs on its carved surfaces no more resembled ancient Chinese than they did Mayan hieroglyphs – yet they reminded her of both, and also of the Indus valley script and undeciphered glyphs of Easter Island.

“Perhaps a prototype of all of them,” Lille had said, in her musical French accent. “When I have deciphered them, perhaps we shall see.”

There had once been more to the site. The rainforest around the pyramid concealed the ruins of an impressive city before whatever catastrophe befell it, thousands of years ago. Now little remained of the other structures; mounds of stone blocks, strange faces of broken statues peering from the underbrush with empty eyes, the occasional low wall that still sketched the foundations of once imposing buildings. The world at large had forgotten the place. The locals knew about it of course, but they rarely admitted it; not because it was taboo, or they were afraid of it, but because they were protective of it, and suspicious of the intentions of outsiders.

Monarch had discovered it through sophisticated satellite imaging rather than through word of mouth.

But the site was more than an archaeological dig. What mattered most was deep within the pyramid.

Which was where they were headed. And where the weird sounds were coming from.

She and Mom climbed into a jeep as the guards opened the gate. A woman – Renata – on one of the watchtowers waved at her, and she waved back. She had a daughter about her age back home.

They drove through the gate, down the bumpy packed-dirt trail to the temple.

Up close you could see the unique features of the pyramid. Comparable structures around the world were usually solid, filled-in bases for temple structures on top. Some might contain relatively small burial or treasure chambers. The Temple of the Moth was different: it was largely hollow, supported by stone columns; it had multiple interior levels and entrances.

Like their living compound, it was surrounded by a fence and watchtowers.

They left the jeep outside of the fence and went on foot. Another set of guards let them through, then closed the gate behind them.

They climbed the broad central stair, through the center doorway.

TWO

From Dr. Chen’s notes:

Who smote Azhi Dahaka, three-jawed and triple-headed, six-eyed, with a thousand perceptions, and of mighty strength, a deception-demon of the Daevas, evil to our settlements, and wicked, whom the evil spirit Angra Mainyu made as the most mighty deception-demon, and for the murder of our settlements, and to slay the homes of Asha!

—The Avesta, Yt. 9.8. Book of Zoroastrianscripture compiled from oral sourcessometime between ad 300–600.

The stone within the temple was ornately carved in enigmatic glyphs and bas-reliefs of humans and beasts that hinted at ancient, mythic stories lost in time, but struggling to be known again. Statues of women in ornate headdresses held up the roof, their expressions knowing and serene. It seemed to Maddie they shared a mystery, but that each also held a secret all her own.

Dr. Mancini, the entomologist, met them in the corridors. He was a little younger than Mom, around forty. He had dark hair and a receding hairline and kind of a nice, slightly silly smile, if he chose to show it off. When he really got talking about insects, he could be pretty interesting. He had a passion and an appreciation for them. But that had only happened once or twice, mostly when he was talking to another adult in the room. He didn’t have kids, and sometimes she thought he didn’t think much of them.

“What the hell happened?” her mom asked Mancini.

“No idea,” Dr. Mancini said. “She was sleeping like a baby until an hour ago and then boom, her radiation levels went through the roof. Almost like something triggered it.”

Mancini looked over at Maddie.

“Are you sure she safe’s in here?” he asked.

That ticked Maddie off. It always did when somebody looked at her and saw nothing but a helpless twelve-year-old.

“She’s sure,” Madison said.

Mancini looked suitably rebuked, but only for an instant. He had bigger things on his mind. Or at least one bigger thing.

“Thanks, Tim,” her mom told Mancini as they approached some double doors. “You know, I can take it from here. Why don’t you get some rest?

“No way,” Mancini said. “Sleep or no sleep, I’m not missing this.”

Her mom didn’t like that answer, Madison could tell, but after a pause she nodded.

As they went deeper into the temple, Maddie paused to admire a stone carving some guys in hazmat suits were photographing. It was beautiful, and she wondered what ancient artist had carved it. It was stylized, but clearly represented a moth. A very special one.

After the pause, she followed the others through the entry hallway.

The chamber inside was stone, like the rest of the temple, but the stuff filling it up was modern, state of the art. Overhead illumination had been wired to the low ceiling. Desks with computers, diagnostic equipment, and multiple displays butted up against the wall, leaving some of the corridor free for the approach to a much larger central chamber. On the screens, EEG and EKG machines presented their continuous reports, radiation profiles shifted and reconfigured, sonar images and just mounds of data. Scientists and techs in Monarch apparel excitedly scurried about their jobs. When she had last been here, it had been a lot – quieter.

Was it happening? Finally?

“Sedatives?” her mother asked Mancini.

“No effect,” he said. “This thing wants to be born.”

A high-pitched chittering drowned out every other sound. Madison jerked her gaze to the central chamber, which she could see through the decontamination lock at the end of the corridor.

It was a big room, with bigger-than-life statues of women looking down upon a very large altar stone. Their arms were behind their backs, supporting the walls; they leaned forward a little, and their carven expressions were – encouraging, Maddie thought. Like when a preschool teacher was trying to get a five-year-old to pronounce a new word the right way. Sunlight shone down from openings in the pyramid’s apex; climbing vines had invaded the chamber, draping everything in green. Birds fluttered through the shaft of light.

Everything seemed to be waiting for what lay on the altar.

And that was something fantastic.

Some of Maddie’s earliest memories were of the backyard behind their small house in Boston. There, she had discovered a world as complex as any jungle on earth, a community of strange creatures that could hold her fascination for the best part of a lazy summer day. The butterflies and moths that drank from flowers; the dragonflies, veined wings glistening in the sun; the spiders, some stalking their prey, others waiting in their webs for it to blunder along. Rainbow-colored beetles so metallic in appearance they seemed more like robots than living things. Ants, building their colonies, their empires. It was like a world from the distant past, before vertebrates inherited the world – with only the occasional squirrel, bird, or human being to disturb that fancy. Giants stalking through their world.

Insects had fascinated her the most because of the way they transformed throughout their lives. It seemed so mysterious that they could have such completely different forms in the same life. Kittens, puppies, chicks were just littler versions of their parents. But cicadas laid eggs that hatched into worms, worms that burrowed into the earth for seventeen years before transforming into something with legs and a triple-segmented body, until finally that too split from its skin and spread its wings.

What rested on the ancient altar brought all that mystery back to her, amplified – and sort of inverted. In her backyard, insect eggs had been tiny. To them, she was a giant of unfathomable size. Now the situation was reversed.

It looked a lot like the silken egg sacs spiders wove; a roundish thing with a skirt of threads attaching it to the stone, so it appeared dome-shaped. Of course, no egg sac she’d ever seen had been big enough to contain a double-decker bus. Inside, light flickered – bioluminescence, like that of a firefly – revealing the squirming shape within. Something alive. Becoming. Something trying to get out.

The sac was completely surrounded by metal catwalks, giving access to her mom and the other scientists who studied it; a larger platform looked down on it from above. Maddie knew not all of that was about science. Some of the equipment was in case things went wrong. A containment field could be switched on if the hatchling became violent. And her mother had also mentioned a kill switch, if things went very wrong. Added to that was a team of military types in hazmat suits, armed with shock rifles.

But hopefully none of that would be needed. Dr. Chen had once told her the creature’s name meant “giver of life.” Everything would be fine.

Nevertheless, Madison’s heart was racing. She and Mom had been talking about this for so long, now that the moment was actually here it seemed unreal.

The voices of the other people in the room sounded distant to Madison. She was completely focused on the movement within the sac, which was intensifying, as was the oscillating radiance.

“Mom,” she said. “I think it’s happening…”

She wasn’t afraid, she realized. She had thought she might be. After all, a Titan was being born – a thing like Godzilla and the MUTOs, a creature capable of crushing a city into ruins. But instead all she felt was awe at what she was witnessing, like the time she had observed a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. But this was on such a different scale. How long had this egg been waiting? Centuries, the scientists thought, or even thousands, maybe millions of years. And she was here to see it happen.

“Her time has come…” her mom said.

The guards moved from the edges of the room, surrounding the sac, shock rifles ready. Maddie watched them, puzzled. What did they think they were doing?

With a final terrific jerk from the creature within, the sac split open and the pupa lifted out of it, towering up into the light, high above the protective goddesses who had been looking down on it. The birds scattered. In the control room, there was a collective gasp.

It – no, she looked very grub-like, Maddie thought, as the Titan’s head lifted still higher, revealing the many caterpillar-like prolegs on her underbelly. But that didn’t capture her majesty. Nor was it completely accurate. She was shaped like a grub or a caterpillar, but armor-plated with chiton, or something similar. Light shimmered from the colorful markings on her thick body. She was so magnificent Madison forgot to breathe for a moment.

The Titan screeched triumphantly, celebrating her own birth.

This was no dumb beast, Maddie realized. She could see intelligence in those strange eyes, as this ancient goddess, this Titan, struggled to orient herself, to take in where she was, and why.

Her mother felt it too and pulled Maddie close. They had been waiting for this moment, building it up – yet it didn’t disappoint. The reality was way more amazing than anything Maddie had imagined. The pulsing, moving patterns, a bit like deep-ocean jellyfish she had seen once in the New England Aquarium, but more complex. They didn’t seem random; they seemed to mean something, however weird that might be to say aloud.

“Meet Titanus Mosura,” Dr. Mancini said. “Or as we like to call her—”

“Mothra,” Madison finished.

“Incredible,” her mother said.

Dr. Mancini pushed a switch and the containment field came on, a glowing blue net, but then it sputtered, faded to red, and flickered out.

“What’s happening?” her mother asked Mancini.

“Something’s really wrong here,” Mancini said. “The containment systems are failing – perimeter alarms are going off – the whole network is going insane.”

“What do you mean?” her mother said. “How’s that possible?

“Emma, I think someone else is doing this,” Mancini shot back.

Mothra’s scream shook the building. Not a triumphant sound this time, but a warning cry.

It was terrifying how everything had gone wrong so quickly.

Her mom grabbed the radio.

“Containment teams, stand down,” she said. “I repeat, stand down, you’re scaring—”

Her command came too late. Mothra was in full panic now, smashing equipment and slamming into the walls. One of the guards fired his shock rifle and the rest quickly followed. If the weapons had any effect at all, it was only to focus the Titan’s fear and anger on them. She swung her body, knocking guards from the catwalks, crushing the scaffolding, battering the cage of equipment surrounding her. And something was spraying from her, wrapping around the teal-clad figures, encasing them. Silk, Maddie thought, her mind in a fog of anxiety. She’s like a silkworm…

It wasn’t just Mothra who was losing it. Everyone was now in a panic. She saw Dr. Mancini open a panel and reach toward a button. The kill switch, she thought. Mancini was going to destroy Mothra.

Her mom grabbed Mancini’s wrist.

“No,” she said.

“Dr. Russell,” he said, “I’m sorry but you know the protocols. We have to terminate—”

“No,” she said. “I’ll handle this.” Her tone left no room for argument.

She grabbed her metal briefcase and ran for the door to the containment area.

“Emma, we don’t know if it will work,” Mancini shouted after her.

Oh, shit, she’s going in there, Madison realized. Into the chamber with Mothra. She was going to try to use the ORCA.

“Mom, no!” she said.

“Madison, stay here. It’s going to work.”

She watched with mounting fear as her mother went through the decontamination chamber. Disinfecting mist obscured her for a moment, and then she emerged in Mothra’s temple.

The Titan shrieked as she approached, unwilling to trust anyone now. Her mother looked tiny as she approached the vast larva towering above her. But she moved with purpose. Laying the plastic case on the ground like an offering before an ancient deity. She opened it, never taking her eyes off the immense, raging pupa.

The ORCA unfolded; several screens expanded beyond the case, along with the speakers and amplifier. If it worked like her mom believed it would, it would change the world. This would be the test. But if it didn’t work or didn’t work right – Maddie didn’t want to think about it.

Mothra grew even more agitated as her mom set up the machine. The Titan probably thought the ORCA was some sort of weapon, like the shock rifles. She could hardly be blamed, considering the greeting her birth had been met with.

But that wouldn’t be of any comfort if Mothra attacked her mother, which was exactly what she looked like she was doing, rearing up to her full height, like a cobra about to strike down on her.

The ORCA came to life; a strange throbbing filled the chamber.

Mothra jerked as if stung and then shot webs at Maddie’s mother. She dodged them, but something snapped in Maddie. She’d been trying to stay cool, to at least look calm. But without even thinking about what she was doing, she bolted toward Dr. Mancini, grabbed his keycard, and ran through the decontamination chamber after her mother. She heard Dr. Mancini shout after her, but he was no more going to stop her than he had her mother. She didn’t have a plan, but she did have a conviction. Mothra was not – should not be – their enemy. She sensed that with every fiber of her being. Mothra was on their side. She was just confused.

She ran up to her mother and embraced her as she worked desperately at the controls of the ORCA. Mothra reared up in fury.

Alpha Frequency found, appeared on the display.

Her mother gathered her in her arms as Mothra struck down at them.

The ORCA began to sing. Mothra stopped, just short of crushing them.

Thum, thum, thum. It sounded like a heartbeat.

Mothra appeared to calm, became entranced. Her bioluminescent display became slower, less erratic. She began to sway, very slightly. Once again she resembled a cobra – no longer poised to strike, but mesmerized by a snake charmer.

As the Titan quietened, so did everyone else. Through the glass, Maddie saw Mancini and the other scientists staring, as enthralled as Mothra.

It was working.

Madison felt the thrumming of the ORCA all the way to her bones. As she joined her mother she felt a profound connection to this entrancing creature. She couldn’t say what it was, exactly. It was just an understanding, a feeling that she knew Mothra, that she had somehow been here before. And that this was exactly where she should be now.

The now peaceful behemoth leaned down, examining her and her mom. Maybe wondering what these little things were, the way Maddie had once marveled over a weird green bug with red spots. As if in a dream, Madison reached out her hand toward Mothra’s head. Her eyes were like blue diamonds, each larger than Maddie’s head. What would it be like, when they touched?

Mothra exhaled, and her breath pushed them back like a strong, warm wind. Her breath smelled like hay and rotten eggs. They both laughed softly as the last of the tension dissolved.

An explosion shook the entire chamber, followed by the deadly rattle of gunfire. Mothra jerked back, as startled as Maddie.