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The Kaiju felt no remorse for her previous actions, for the destruction of the city ahead or for the coastline she swam along. It felt righteous then, and her memory of the events remained the same. There had been no other option. Not with that wounded voice.

A sudden shift in emotion revealed a change in the battle’s direction. The humans, their friends, spiked with fear strong enough for Nemesis to feel it from hundreds of miles, and at this proximity, it felt like a slap. They were in danger, direct and immediate.

We’re not going to make it
, Endo thought, urging they move faster despite knowing it was no use. They still had miles to cover, and the doom roiling from their friends was growing all the more powerful, rising to a peak.

Nemesis roared. The bubbling vocalization would betray their position to the human military forces seeking them out, but it couldn’t be helped. Feeling helpless was not something the Kaiju was familiar with, and it revealed itself as emotions that mirrored those of the people for whom she felt concern.

And then, in a flash, everything changed.

They felt relief and surprise from the humans. They had been saved, by something else. Something that filled their hearts with hope.

But Nemesis felt nothing.

It was like the newcomer wasn’t really there, detectable only through the emotions of others.

The Gestorumque’s reaction was equal to that of the humans, but vastly different. After a moment of confusion, the creature emoted waves of anger, fear and doubt. Whatever it had encountered, it was unexpected, but recognized. Nemesis sensed a struggle, reading the Gestorumque’s emotions like a painting, but the image was one sided and incomplete.

And then there was pain. The Gestorumque had been wounded.

Logic with a twinge of shame-filled fear propelled the creature away from the humans, who were now elated. The danger for them had passed.

Nemesis’s charge slowed as she reached shallow waters and let her head rise up. For the first time, she saw the scene with her eyes, and for the first time, she felt complete and abject shock. She flinched in the water, slowing nearly to a stop as a memory slammed into her mind.

Her death.

She felt it again.

Saw this ancient enemy.

Experienced the pain it had wrought.

Endo felt it too, but warned against her building emotions.
That wasn’t you. Wasn’t us. This is not our enemy. It saved our friends.

But as he experienced the death himself, his voice lost power, and all that was left in the void of Nemesis’s primal mind, was what she had been designed for: vengeance.

She would destroy her ancient enemy, without mercy, compassion or hesitation. With a thrust of her tail, Nemesis pounded through the water, surging toward a battle once lost, but soon avenged.

24

“Kiku,” Seika Ayugai whispered. “Never leave me.”

Kiku stared back, unblinking, her smile warming his heart. She was always there for him. Always present. Always smiling. Always pretty. Seika considered himself blessed and lucky to have found her at a comic book convention. He didn’t get out much—hardly ever—but some of his virtual gaming friends had been having an annual meet up and he had known that getting out of his small Tokyo apartment would make his parents happy.

He’d first seen her through a display of Manga, and he’d instantly been smitten by her wide green eyes and lithe figure. He had approached cautiously, with the nervousness of a thirty year old man who had never had a female friend, let alone been with a woman. Her docile demeanor put him at ease and he’d felt no judgment about his size, his balding hair or the nasal pitch of his voice.

He squeezed her soft body, pulling her against him and leaning his cheek against hers. Light filtering through the blinds made him squint.

Another morning.

Another day. From his small room, he could telecommute, do his programming, play Final Fantasy 10 with his friends and have food delivered. With the attached single person bathroom, he could go entire days—weeks even—without ever having to leave this safe space. And Kiku, the ever faithful, stayed with him every second.

He sat up and looked down at her body, still as perfectly formed and creamy skinned as when he’d first seen her. “Love you, Ki—” The bed shook beneath him. “—ku?”

He looked around the perfectly organized room. A pen rolled across his desk and fell to the floor.

“Was that you?” he asked, and something about the question made him queasy. He knew it wasn’t her.

The bed shook again, and this time, the room with it. The glowing screen of his laptop, wallpapered with a photo of Kiku, flickered.

Seika stood slowly, his flaccid legs straining with the effort. Hands on hips, he stretched to either side and then stepped toward the window. He didn’t want to open it. Didn’t want to see the city, or feel the warmth of the sun. It irritated his skin, and something about the city—and all the people in it—revolted him. But if there was an earthquake, he and Kiku might have to flee the city.

When was the last time I used the moped?
he wondered, considering whether or not he’d remember how to use it, if it still had gasoline, if the gasoline had gone bad and how he would carry Kiku on the bike.

Seika’s chest tightened. He leaned forward, holding himself up against the window sill, breathing deeply.
I need to exercise
, he thought.
Or I’m going to die in this room
. His eyes widened a touch.
I don’t want to die in this room.
He looked back at Kiku. Her gaze filled him with relief, and his fears about spending the rest of his life in this small space didn’t feel so wrong. “If you won’t leave me, I will stay here forever.”

He reached out for the tilt wand on the blinds. He braced himself for the warm glow of the sun and then twisted the wand.

He squinted in the light, groaning and nearly closing the blinds again. But then he saw Tokyo outside, gleaming and clean from the previous night’s rain. It was still early, and the streets had yet to congest with commuters. It even seemed quiet.

Then everything shook again, more violently this time. The distant sound of shattering glass was followed by an ear-splitting warning klaxon. Were they under attack? Was it the Chinese, finally seeking retribution for World War II? He looked out the window, peering past the neighboring sky-rise buildings to Tokyo Harbor.

A wave slid into view, crashing against the docks and tossing boats like toys. He felt a twitch in his mind, as it tried to tell him he was watching a movie. He stepped back and confirmed that he was looking out a window. That this wasn’t a hoax.

An earthquake at sea,
he thought, and he began tallying how many nuclear power plants were in the area. The closest he knew about was Hamaoka in Omaezaki, a three hour drive to the south. They should be safe from a meltdown like the one suffered by the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, but he couldn’t recall if his building was earthquake-proof. He glanced at Kiku and felt safer. As long as she was here, he was safe.

“I won’t leave you,” he said. “I will—”

Another quake drew his eyes back to the harbor, and what he saw drew a high-pitched scream from his lips. It slowly reached a crescendo that matched the urgency of the warning klaxons rousing the city from its slumber.

Stepping from the ocean and onto the docks was a monster...a Kaiju.

“Like Nemesis,” he said. But not.

The creature before him looked about the same size as Nemesis, who had yet to make landfall in Tokyo, denying her fans the giant monster stereotype. But now...
this
monster had arrived. It rose from the water, standing hundreds of feet tall, and it spread its four arms wide. The arms were long and thin, ending in slender three-fingered hands tipped with hooked talons that were longer than the hands themselves.

Its body was covered in a kind of exoskeleton that looked like it wore the bones of another creature over its own bones, but they were still wrapped in its own rough looking, mottled maroon and gray skin. The bony framework made it look emaciated, but its size...the thing exuded power and ferocity. A line of thick, pointed hairs, each the size of a telephone pole, lined the creature’s back, like the dorsal spines of a fish without the fin flesh stretched between them. The worst of it was the face, which reminded Seika of the smooth-domed heads of the xenomorphs from
Aliens
, but with three red eyes on either side of the head and surrounded by a variety of gray, bony protrusions that could act as offensive weapons or defensive armor. It turned its head, making a slow survey of the city, its lips sneering up, revealing chaotic rows of sharp teeth.

It turned around, moving too fast, like a spider, twitching quickly, moving from one place to another in a blink. The sudden movement sent a fresh wave rolling down the city streets. A bony-looking, whip-like tail sailed out of the water and struck a building, slicing clean through it at an angle. Gravity tugged on the top half of the building, sliding it toward the ground. Though it crumbled as it moved, the building remained in two distinct slices until the top half spilled over the side and crashed into the ground, pulverizing the building across the street and sending up a plume of dust that partially obscured the monster.

Seika took in a deep, wheezing breath and staggered back. When his legs struck the bed, he fell back, sitting atop Kiku’s legs. She didn’t complain. She never complained. He reached out for her and grasped a handful of her leg, squeezing hard. “We need to leave,” he said, looking around the small room.

When his eyes settled on Kiku again and he saw her unconcerned smile, a rush of dopamine put him at ease. It was a big city. The Japanese Defense Force and the American military would respond soon enough. The Kaiju looked dangerous. Ferocious. But it didn’t have the glowing membranes that Nemesis did. It couldn’t level entire cities with the force of a nuclear blast. To reach him, it would have to move through a wall of buildings.

He pushed off the bed and watched the creature twitch around in the harbor, like a dog sniffing out a trail. It didn’t seem particularly interested in the city.
It’s here for something else
, he thought and then he turned to Kiku. “We’re safe here.”

A crash spun him back around and made him gasp. A second building was falling.

His thoughts turned back to the moped. If it still ran, he could be out of the city quickly, even if the roads were congested with fleeing cars, the moped would find a path through.

It’s my best chance
, he thought, and he turned to leave.

Kiku’s smiling face locked him in place. He said he wouldn’t leave her. She’d been with him, without fail, for years. Never complaining. Never asking anything of him.

He stood still, clenching his fists. “You’ve made me a prisoner.”

I was already a prisoner
, he thought.

“You made me a content prisoner.”

She didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Said nothing.

Tension crept up the back of Seika’s neck, propelled by the klaxons, the sound of destruction and a warbled, haunting cry that made tears well in his eyes.

Then he snapped, thrusting an accusatory finger at Kiku. “You’re just a pillow!”

A wave of true relief rushed through him.

The truth freed him.

And then, with a groan of airborne metal, and a quickly muffled scream, the tossed hull of a fifty foot fishing trawler crushed him.

25

The closer they got to Tokyo, the more reports of carnage began to filter through over the radio and the emergency channels. Something big—a Kaiju—had surfaced in Tokyo Bay. It hadn’t moved inland yet, but it was making a mess of the coastline. Several buildings had been destroyed, and in a city like Tokyo, that probably meant thousands of lives lost. But most major coastal cities around the world had developed emergency evacuation plans after what had happened in Boston, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The populations of landlocked cities had more time to get clear, but when a Kaiju rose from the depths, the time between life and death was reduced from days or hours, to just minutes.

Neither Hawkins nor Lilly could speak Japanese, but from what they got from the U.S. Military in the area, it sounded like the mass exodus of Tokyo had already begun. A counteroffensive from the U.S. Navy and Air Force—jointly operating with the Japanese Defense Force—would begin in the next ten minutes.

Hawkins glanced back at their passenger and noticed the man’s attention fully on Lilly. “
Hey.
”

The man blinked and turned to Hawkins. “Sorry. She fascinates me.”

“She,” Lilly said from the cockpit, glancing back, “is sitting right here.” She raised and flexed her hand, extending her retractable claws. “And she isn’t above skewering your nuts.”

Alicio Brice leaned back in his seat, grimacing, and he kept his eyes turned toward Hawkins. “Did you need something?”

“You speak Japanese?” Hawkins asked.

Brice shook his head. “Some of my predecessors did.”

Hawkins knew Brice was talking about earlier clones, men who had lived and worked on Island 731. They had performed human experimentation on countless people since World War II. Their creations had killed many of his friends and nearly killed him and Joliet, not to mention decimating Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and a line of cities between and around them. Everything he knew about the man sitting in the cargo bay, hands and ankles bound, said that he was a monster.

The
father
of monsters.

And he didn’t deny it. But he also claimed to be different from those who had come before him. He had the same interests and mental agility—his words—but he lacked their ruthless ambition. He also claimed that he was the one who had set Maigo free. Lilly couldn’t confirm it, but she had seen Maigo captured, and soon after, seen her walk out of the Russian prefab base with the ease of someone set free. But that didn’t mean Brice was telling the truth. He was still an employee of GOD, and that made him dangerous.