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  “No,” Serizawa said. “Ghidorah and Godzilla’s rivalry was ancient. And unique. Dr. Graham even believed it was their last battle that trapped Ghidorah in the ice, eons ago.”

  “So you’re telling me we just killed our best shot at beating this thing?” Sergeant Martinez said.

  “Outside of a miracle,” Chen said, “yes.”

  She was right. He had identified the problem, but it was an equation with no solution. It was clear that military measures alone couldn’t stop him, including their Oxygen Destroyer. And since Godzilla’s death, none of the other Titans had even attempted to go against the three-headed monstrosity. That included Rodan, who had plenty of reason to be pissed at Ghidorah. He, too, was taking orders from the Alpha.

  So what was left?

  Mark looked around at all of the hopeless expressions, at the holocaust engulfing the world. What were they all standing around for? What was he doing? Nothing.

  He got up.

  “Where are you going?” Coleman asked.

  “To look for a miracle,” he replied.

  * * *

  To say things weren’t going the way Emma had expected them to would be an understatement. She’d known there would be death and destruction on some scale. Death was natural, a part of how things were supposed to be. Sometimes there had to be a little more of it than usual to restore balance in a system, especially one as compromised as what many scientists had begun calling the Anthropocene, or “Age of Man.” The sheer amount of damage humanity had done to the world’s ecosystem qualified it as its own era. And the Anthropocene had been well on its way to hosting the greatest mass extinction in history. Greater than the Permian, when ninety percent of everything died. That’s what the planet was facing – in decades, not centuries or millennia. When change happened slowly over a long period of time, life adapted. But when the time frame was too short, natural selection didn’t have an opportunity to do its thing – unless you were bacteria. Humanity had pushed the natural order almost to a point of no return. That was what she’d been determined to prevent.

  But now she saw wildfires the size of small continents, oceans turning red, massive die-offs of fish, birds, coral reefs. Gigatons of ash, smoke, and carbon dioxide were pouring into the atmosphere. Entire ecosystems were being trashed – some already wiped away completely.

  She’d thought the human race was bad, but in one day, Monster Zero and the Titans he controlled had done as much damage as humanity had in the last century.

  She paced in the control room, feeling like a caged tiger.

  “Madison’s right,” she told Jonah. “We didn’t hit the reset button, we hit the detonator.”

  “Madison is a child,” he replied. “This is a war. It’s why you came to us, what we’ve been fighting for, remember?”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said. “Jonah, we were fighting to restore the natural order. That meant humans and Titans coexisting in balance. But with Godzilla gone, Monster Zero isn’t using the Titans to restore the planet – he’s using them to destroy it. This isn’t coexistence. It’s extinction.”

  “But not for us,” Jonah said.

  She turned to look at him. What was he talking about?

  He poured a scotch.

  “Fancy a drink?” he said.

  “A drink?” She was incredulous.

  He shrugged and poured a second one for her anyway.

  “Did I ever tell you how my daughter died?” he asked. “Abducted on her way home from school. They found her six days later in a storm drain while I was out fighting some dirty war for my country – trying to make the world a better place. Like you are.”

  He knocked back the drink.

  “I’ve seen human nature firsthand. It doesn’t change. It just gets worse. So I’m sorry if Monster Zero wasn’t exactly what we were expecting – but we already opened Pandora’s box. There’s no closing it now.”

  She had been thinking about that – a lot. And she knew the Pandora story, how she let every disease and hardship out of the box the gods had trapped them in.

  But after all the demons escaped, one thing that remained in the box was Elpis. The personification of hope.

  She nodded at the ORCA.

  “Maybe there is,” she said. She pointed to one of the monitors showing the evacuation of Boston; Fenway Park was a major hub for the airlift.

  “Oh, don’t be stupid. You broadcast again and you will expose us all,” Jonah said.

  She pressed on.

  “These creatures communicate like whales, okay?” she said. “They can hear sonar for thousands of miles. So let’s send a team, let’s broadcast the ORCA from Fenway. It’s just a few miles from here. I can use the stadium to amplify the signal. That might break Monster Zero’s hold over them and stop these attacks. The city’s being evacuated, so it’ll be safe.”

  “And then what?” Jonah asked.

  “I’ll figure out what the hell Monster Zero really is. And how to stop it.”

  Jonah’s lips thinned.

  “Before Monarch finds us? I’m sure your real friends will be very happy to see you again.”

  “We can’t just sit here,” Emma said. “This isn’t the world we wanted.”

  “You once said that the world always belonged to them. So maybe it’s time we give it back.”

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Not like this.”

  She started toward the ORCA. If Jonah didn’t want to stick his neck out, she would do it without him. It had to be tried.

  Behind her she heard the click of a gun cocking. She turned back and saw him holding a pistol.

  “Jonah? What are you doing?”

  “The things I’ve done,” he said, his voice grim. “The things I’ve seen… Humanity is a disease and the fewer of them there are the better it is for me.” He smiled. “Thank you, Doctor. You cleared the way for us. And when the dust settles, we will live like kings.”

  He turned to one of his men.

  “Sergeant Travis,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  “Do me a favor. If Dr. Russell goes anywhere near the ORCA, slit her daughter’s throat.”

  “Yes, sir,” the mercenary said.

  Jonah got up and slid the drink he’d poured for her across the table.

  “Enjoy your drink.”

  * * *

  Even over the intercom, without being able to see him, Jonah’s voice sent a chill through Maddie. She hadn’t known about his daughter. It was terrible what had happened to her. But it didn’t excuse him for all of the murdering he’d done and was planning on doing. Just because someone had taken his daughter from him, didn’t make it okay to wipe out most of the human race. Andrew’s death had hurt her mother and father, and they had both reacted badly, done bad things. Mom worst of all. But at least she still had a soul. She was willing to try and set things as right as they could be.

  But Jonah’s soul was long gone. She had no doubt he would cut her throat himself if he thought it necessary. Or maybe even just for the hell of it.

  Her mother knew that, too. She was willing to risk pretty much anyone’s life – except Maddie’s.

  Her eyes drifted back to the photo she’d pulled up on her pad. It was of all of them, the whole family, sitting on the stoop of their house in Boston. In front of the blue door. Mom on one side, Dad on the other, she and Andrew in between them. Dad had set the camera up on a tripod and put it on a timer. It had taken four attempts to get the final shot, because Andrew kept making goofy faces. Dad had finally changed the timing without telling anyone.

  They had taken it a few days before… it happened.

  It was maybe the last time she had felt like everything was all right.

  Now they were back in Boston, or at least near it, as the map of Monarch bunkers on her wall confirmed. Bunker 09.

  She thought over her mom’s plan to amplify the ORCA’s signal, and between that and the photo, something began stirring around in her mind. Something
better than sitting in this room. Would Mom’s idea work? She didn’t know. But she remembered how Monster Zero had reacted, back in Antarctica. At the very least it would annoy him. At best – well, it could help. Help Monarch take him out. Help Dad.

  Mom couldn’t do it now, not with Jonah’s men watching her. But she could.

  * * *

  On the deck of the oil rig, the rain drove down like nails from the fuming clouds above. Ghidorah’s storm was big, now, bigger than any weather system ever recorded. How long could the monster keep it up? If he blanketed the earth – or even a considerable chunk of it – in these clouds for weeks or months, it would have the practical effect of a nuclear winter. Green plants would die, followed by things that ate green plants, and then – well, everything else. Never mind all of the flooding, the saturation of reefs with fresh water…

  And they had killed the only goddamn thing that might have stopped him. Of course, if Monarch hadn’t kept Zero alive in the first place, if they had euthanized him while he slept, none of this would be happening.

  Maybe. It wasn’t easy to kill a Titan. They had tried to fry a contained MUTO once, in Japan. It hadn’t worked. They had probably upgraded their kill-switch technology in the past five years, but when it got right down to it, the only way to know if something would kill a Titan was to try it on one. They tried to kill Godzilla ages ago with a nuclear bomb, and that hadn’t worked. The Oxygen Destroyer hadn’t killed Ghidorah. If they tried to fry Ghidorah in his sleep, it might have merely awakened him. Maybe whatever Monarch had done, Monster Zero would be here, now, bringing the rain.

  And none of that even mattered, now. It was too late.

  “Mark, wait! What are you doing?”

  Sam Coleman, following him. Why? Why did this guy keep trying to be his friend?

  But he was trying, wasn’t he? Or maybe just trying to stop him from stealing an Osprey.

  “I can’t just sit down there, Sam,” he said. “I gotta do something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like go find my daughter.”

  “How?” Sam asked. “Where are you gonna go?”

  “She’s the only thing I got left, Sam,” he said. “I wasn’t there for her. I’m not gonna let that happen again.”

  It hung like that for a moment, the two of them standing in the rain.

  “Okay,” Sam said finally, genuine understanding in his expression. “Good luck.”

  Mark nodded, then strode on through the rain. He spotted an Osprey and climbed into the cockpit. He wasn’t quite sure why – he didn’t think he could fly the damn thing. And even if he could, Sam was right. Where would he go? Emma would have her someplace safe, in one of the Monarch shelters, probably. But which one? He didn’t even know where most of them were.

  He closed his eyes and put his head down.

  Please, he thought. Please.

  The pounding of rain on the Osprey’s metal roof slackened off. The wind dropped to nothing, and there was a smell – that moment after rain, when the first kiss of the sun touches the damp earth. But there was no sun. Instead, when he opened his eyes and looked up at the dark clouds, Mark saw a brilliant light emerging.

  He stepped out of the Osprey to get a better look, to understand what he was seeing.

  The light shone from a pair of enormous wings, as if an angel was descending from the heavens. But an angel with the gossamer wings of an insect rather than feathered pinions. And the body those wings bore between them wasn’t remotely human in form. More like an insect. But it felt like an angel. Like an answer to a prayer.

  It could only be Mothra. The Titan his daughter had been reaching to touch when Jonah’s mercenaries arrived. A pupa no longer.

  And yet this didn’t feel like a monster. It wasn’t attacking them, for one thing, but just revealing itself – almost as if it expected something from him. Whatever was going on, Mothra wasn’t taking orders from Ghidorah.

  In fact, Monster Zero’s storm continued to recede, as if it could not stand Mothra’s light.

  This was something new. Even with Godzilla gone, Ghidorah wasn’t in total control of all the Titans. One still stood apart. He remembered the ancient representation Chen had shown them. Godzilla and humans, fighting side by side with – this.

  For the first time since Antarctica, Mark felt hope.

  SIXTEEN

  From the notes of Dr. Houston Brooks:

  But to return to our hypothesis, in order to explain the change of the Variations, we have adventured to make the Earth hollow and the place another within it; and I doubt not that this will find opposers enough.

  —Edmund Halley. An Account of the Cause of the Change of the Variation of the Magnetic Needle; with an Hypothesis of the Structure of the Internal Parts of the Earth, Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society of London, No. 195, 1692, pp 563–578.

  Inside the base, Serizawa witnessed Mothra’s arrival and the retreat of the storm. The restoration of balance, at least in this corner of the world. He wished Vivienne could have lived to see this, the vindication of their beliefs.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured.

  All the more wonderful because of the hope she brought in this dark moment. And yet Mothra was only one. With Ghidorah commanding the other Titans, how much could she do?

  “Mothra,” Dr. Chen said. “Queen of the monsters.”

  Serizawa thought he heard pride in her voice. He knew her twin sister Ling was on the Yunnan replacement crew, but was there more to her excitement? Her family’s history with Monarch was as old as his own, and her knowledge of the mythic import of the Titans was greater than anyone’s. Had she suspected Mothra was different? Did she know more about Mothra than she let on?

  Just then, Mark came in, soaked to the bone.

  “Stanton, are you recording this?” he asked.

  “I record everything, man,” Stanton said. “Everything.”

  He turned up the sound, and the room was filled with what might be a choir of crickets and cicadas, but more… musical than that.

  “It’s like a song,” Chen said.

  “Is this bug communicating?” Admiral Stenz said.

  “There’s more, Admiral,” Mark said. “It’s just outside our hearing range.”

  “I’ll bet that there’s only one thing that can understand this,” Stanton said.

  That was right. If Mothra was communicating, who was she talking to? Not Ghidorah.

  “Godzilla,” Serizawa said.

  “Yep,” Stanton confirmed. “I’m picking up the reply…”

  Another sound joined Mothra’s song – a faint thud, a deep moan…

  “He’s still alive…” Chen said.

  Serizawa took a breath. Mothra hadn’t come to fight a losing battle. She had come to show them the way. To bring Godzilla back. That was the rational core of the hope he’d felt at the sight of her petal-like wings.

  Others, of course, were not so reverent.

  Barnes, for instance. The Chief Warrant Officer gestured at the goddess.

  “So her and Godzilla have some kind a thing going on?” he said. “Kind of messed up, right?”

  “Symbiotic relationships between different species aren’t all that uncommon,” Sam said.

  “Still messed up,” Barnes said.

  “Can you track him?” Serizawa asked. There was no time to waste. The world was spiraling into chaos. If there was something they could do, the quicker they did it, the better.

  “No,” Stanton replied. “Signal’s too weak.”

  He turned his gaze to Mothra.

  “But maybe she can.”

  Chen glanced over at Mark.

  “You asked for a miracle,” she told him. “I think we just got one.”

  “How many nukes do you have?” Mark asked.

  Serizawa wrinkled his brow.

  “Why?” he said.

  “We can help him.”

  For the first time in a while, Serizawa smiled.

  * * *

&nbs
p; The plan came together quickly, as it had to. The fleet was fueled, provisioned, made ready for war. Ships were called in from nearby ports and bases. Aircraft carriers, destroyers, one Ticonderoga-class cruiser stocked with Tomahawk missiles, alongside smaller but still deadly vessels. They had half a dozen nuclear subs. One would serve as Admiral Stenz’s command center. Most of the others would join the fight as well.

  But one was being outfitted for something special.

  Serizawa thought this was probably the largest fleet of war deployed since World War II.

  They had air power, too. Squadrons of jets and helicopters had been assembled as well. This battle group represented all of the might Monarch and the government could bring together.

  But Serizawa knew that without Godzilla, it wouldn’t be enough. Everything now rested on the sword’s edge.

  Which might be a fitting name for the submarine the techs were getting ready for him and his people, loading it up with nuclear weapons. That was his part of the mission.

  “This plan,” Stanton said, nervously. “It’s what we call a long shot, right?”

  “No,” Serizawa said. “It’s our only shot.”

  “Yeah,” Stanton said. “Cool.” He took a slug from a flask.

  * * *

  After he was certain he had everything he needed on the submarine, Serizawa went to Vivienne’s room. All of her things were still there, although there weren’t that many of them. Some clothes and a small assortment of hats. A photograph of the two of them when she’d first joined Monarch, along with the team he’d been working with at the time, including Brooks.

  She’d been so young, so full of wonder. So intelligent. What, twenty-two, maybe? She had called him ‘Sensei’ the first time they met, and she had never called him anything else. She had more compassion than anyone he’d ever met. And until the day she died, she had never lost her sense of wonder.

  Besides those things, there was her collection: an Indonesian Garuda bird puppet, a thunderbird mask carved by a Haida artist, a wooden statuette of Minokawa, the moon-swallowing bird monster of Bagobo folklore she’d picked up on their trip to the Philippines to see a fossilized Titan skeleton. Various small pieces of art from around the world that she thought might represent folk memories of the Titans. He picked up one of them, a simple pendant carved from stone, a bipedal lizard with a long, thick tail and ragged dorsal spines. He had given her that one himself, on her thirtieth birthday. His father had given it to him, years before. His father had been given it by a Yapese man who had carved it from memory.