It’s that sense of desperation that sends me hurtling forward, regardless of the fact that we were fighting just a second ago. That sensation, that utter panic, has no place in a videogame. I have only an instant to recognize this with the same detachment that’s allowed me to recognize my anger, but I’m too swept up in it to examine it further. My entire life is consumed by the overwhelming belief that this giant snake needs to die right fucking now.
Taisaur’s almost on him, he leaps, horns lowered. The wound, glistening with green fluids, is right in front of us. We’re airborne, leaping for it—
—the snake’s head is suddenly in front of me, jaws open far too wide. Its mouth is brimming with obsidian hooks in place of teeth.
I scream. Taisaur roars. And then his stripes burst with crimson energy. The snake’s strike rebounds off the rippling red energy surrounding Taisaur and his HP bar doesn’t drop. My partially refilled rage meter, however, is depleted in an instant and my kaiju is airborne again. Apparently Taisaur’s new force field trick doesn’t stop all of the energy directed into it and with no ground to brace against we’re suddenly toppling end over end in the opposite direction.
When we hit, the HP bar flashes. A little warning music begins, beeping in an obnoxious rhythm. I’ve never seen Taisaur’s HP bar that low before. Unless you count it being empty.
Haliram screams. Lustinia’s wasted no time exploiting the opening my attack has created. Her kaiju is leaping for the snake monster’s neck, aiming to slice the head clean from the body.
The cobra twists and the blades lining its hood catch Halria’s claws in a shower of sparks. The two crystalline appendages bite into each other and when Halira tries to dart away, she’s nearly yanked off her feet. She’s stuck.
The snake kaiju realizes this. Its massive body erupts from the ground in armored coil after armored coil, wrapping them around Halira’s smaller form until all but her HP bar and name vanish from sight. Lusitania is screaming. Swearing. Aaron you better fucking kill this thing!
And then the cobra’s coils pull inward. There’s a cracking sound. And Halria’s HP bar and name vanish too. It’s just me and Taisaur against this thing. Whatever this thing is. It unwinds itself from the ball it’s made, white powder raining down from where it had been clutching Halira.
I can see exactly how big it is now. I wish I couldn’t. This snake kaiju has to be over a thousand feet long. Maybe even fifteen hundred. I’m like a mongoose staring down a king cobra in front of it. Or at least, I’d like to think so. A mongoose has a decent chance of winning. Then again, a mongoose isn’t usually this outsized and its opponent isn’t covered in freaking razorblades.
It comes for me. I charge to meet it. There’s nothing else I can do.
The massive, hooded head raises up, higher and higher, ready to strike. It’s too fast too dodge coming head-on. My rage meter is too depleted for another force field. I lower my horns. The best I can do is maybe take it down with me with a lucky shot.
It strikes and something hits me from the side.
I topple over, completely disoriented. I can’t see. It’s dark.
I roar and lash out, trying to catch whatever hit me with my claws or tail…only I don’t have either of those things. And my thrashing is giving me a rug burn.
Lightning flares, followed by the kachoom of thunder, momentarily illuminating my dorm room. The lights are out and the storm is still raging outside. And Brett is standing over me, a wild look in his eye.
“What the hell was that for?” I demand, pushing myself upright. “If you didn’t want me using your TV all you had to do was say so.”
He shuffles back a few steps as I get up. It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting but his arms are raised like I might come at him. “Aaron, what are you talking about?”
I furrow my brow. “What are you talking about? I was just playing my videogame when you shoved me.”
He shakes his head. “Aaron, the storm knocked out the power an hour ago. It got so bad they canceled classes.”
“An hour ago?” That couldn’t be right. I don’t know how long I was playing but I just had power. I must have. “Must not have effected this building until just now.”
“No, Aaron, the power’s been off. I came in and found you with your hand pressed to the side of the TV. Growling. Aaron, there was nothing on the screen.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
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I want to roll my eyes. The game, which Brett just yanked me out of, took a lot out of me. Physically I’m fine. Psychologically? Emotionally? I feel like I’ve run some kind of metaphysical marathon. I’m too drained to deal with whatever fresh shit Brett’s come up with today.
“I don’t know what you think you saw or didn’t see,” I say. “But I was playing a videogame. That’s it.”
“What game?” Brett demands. I want to ask what the hell that matters. A game’s a game. I don’t though.
The more I try to keep from him the more obnoxious he becomes. If I don’t give him an answer he might tear the damn room apart again and with the storm outside I really don’t want to deal with that right now. “It’s called Kaiju Wars Online.”
He crosses his arms. “Never heard of it.”
This time I don’t resist the urge to roll my eyes. I do it. Slowly so he can see. “You wouldn’t have. It’s in closed beta right now. And it’s not mainstream anyway.”
He snorts and jerks his thumb at his chest. “You think I’m mainstream?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, Aaron?”
My temper, tired as it is, flares. “What is your problem?”
“Aaron, you were growling at a blank screen!” He throws his arms forward, as if pleading with me to understand how weird this is. And if the screen had actually been blank, I’d agree with him.
“The screen wasn’t blank, Brett,” I say, with just as much exasperation.
“Yes, it was.” He fishes out his phone and holds it up. “Aaron, I tried for five minutes to get your attention. I freaking videoed you just in case, man.”
He fiddles with the phone and holds it out to me. My stomach is sinking. I don’t want to take that phone. There’s nothing wrong with me. I was just playing the game. There’s nothing on his phone that’s going to change facts. And yet I’m filled with that same disconcerting dread right now, looking at his phone, all prepped to roll his little home movie, that I felt when that snake kaiju appeared.
It’s illogical and stupid. I grab the phone and squish my finger to the play button. I’m being stupid and need to prove that Brett’s full of shit.
The video is hard to see because it’s so dark. That’s my first clue that something’s wrong. If the television was on it would be shedding light into the dorm.
Brett’s voice comes over the speaker, cheerful at first, then hesitant. Lightning flashes outside lighting up the room and I see myself, almost hunched over, my hand pressed against the side of the television. I am fixated. Like those cartoons of people who stare at a screen so long they begin to slobber.
Only I’m not slobbering. I’m snarling. Growling. Almost spitting. “What the fuck?”
Brett calls to me several times in the video and on the screen I spasm. At first, I think I’m responding to him, then I realize that there’s no correlation between his words and my actions. I’m lost in the game. Each time I jerk or move, my memory supplies the play-by-play recount of the fight. First with the alien military, then with Halira, and then with the cobra kaiju.
The video ends and I hand him back his phone. He’s looking at me like he’s expecting me to say something only I’ve got no clue what to say. I’m not even sure what it is that I’ve just seen.
I look down at my right hand. The scar down at the base of the palm is almost invisible in the poor lighting. Almost. I poke at it and feel nothing but the toughened line
of tissue. What did those doctors put in me?
I step over to the television and put my hand to it. Nothing happens. I look at my hand again. Is it not working because Brett’s here or because there’s no power?
I hold my hand back out. “Can I see your phone real quick?”
Even though I was just holding it a second ago Brett hesitates before handing it back over again. It’s a smartphone. Not that different from my own. After a second of holding it, the app for Kaiju Wars Online pops up.
I hold the phone up for him to see.
“What am I looking for?” he says, stepping up.
“Do you see that app?” I point to it.
He glances at me. “There’s nothing there.”
My stomach clenches. How can he not see it? It’s right there. “Look again.”
He does. “I’m telling you, Aaron, there’s nothing there. That’s just an empty patch of screen.”
How can he not see it? If the implant had been in my head or my eye I could understand but it’s in my hand. It powers up my phone. Or am I imagining that? What if I’ve been imagining this whole thing?
If no one else can see the app or the game, then I’ve got no proof that I’ve actually been playing anything. I could have been hallucinating every time I played. Xenatlas, Solrin, and Megaptera? I don’t know who any of them are in real life. Hell, the only thing I have to call them by are their kaiju’s names. My subconscious or whatever might have pulled them out of thin air and invented them.
Lusitania is real though. But was she really playing the game? With her perfect little life? Halira and her only showed up after I’d learned she was on campus. Was that just my mind trying to process and purge?
“Is this what you’ve been sneaking off to do?” Brett asks, pulling me from my spiraling thoughts.
I’m so disoriented I don’t actually process what he’s said and have to ask him to repeat himself.
He speaks slowly, calmly, as if I’m a big nasty dog that’s just stepped in front of him on the street. “I said, is this what you’ve been sneaking off to do? To play this…game?”
He doesn’t believe that the game is real. I can’t blame him. Right now, I’m not sure it is either.
“Yeah,” I say. “I have to. It’s not…it’s not just a game. It’s a therapy tool.”
He furrows his brow. “You’ve lost me.”
“This head-shrink visited me while I was locked up,” I explain. “Said I undergo this procedure to get a microchip put in my hand and beta test this videogame that’s supposed to help with anger management, I get out early. Like parole, only with a game instead of an officer.”
“Okay,” Brett says slowly. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?”
When he says it like that I do. The whole thing is one of those ‘life’s stranger than fiction’ chain of events where the sheer absurdity of it all kept me believing that it was all happening. Is there even a Dr. Warden? Shit, what about the half a million he promised me? The first quarter was in my account before I started playing, but if I’m seeing things maybe my brain made that up too.
“Nobody is let out of prison to play a videogame, Aaron. The world just doesn’t work like that,” Brett says. “I think we need to get you to a counselor. Maybe you should sit down for a bit. When the storm let’s up, I’ll help you get over there.”
A counselor? As in another head-shrink. That’s just what I need right now, isn’t it? Or maybe it actually is. Dammit, if I’m hallucinating or creating these elaborate fantasies about monsters all in my head, then a head doctor is maybe exactly what I need to see right now.
“Where’s the counselor’s office?” I ask.
I don’t even realize I’m making for the door until Brett stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Aaron. Aaron! You can’t go outside right now. That storm is out there is killer. The counselor probably went home.”
As if in answer, the storm flashes with a lightning display to put everything before it to shame. The sky is a solid white mass of energy outside the window and the dorm is lit up brighter than noon. The thunder hits before the lightning is done, rattling the window. And then the entire building.
The floor shakes and a pencil rolls off Brett’s desk, the sound of it hitting the floor lost to the dull, bone-shaking rumble. The lightning surge ends, plunging us into darkness again. Only the thunder doesn’t stop with it. It keeps on going.
I can’t even hear it anymore so much as feel it. The whole dorm is shaking, threatening to collapse. Is it an earthquake?
A roar reaches my ears. My blood freezes at the familiar sound. I try to convince myself that it’s just thunder.
But another flash of lightning illuminates the sky and I see it. Silhouetted against the storm, rising hundreds of feet above the university buildings, bladed hood flared, is the cobra kaiju.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
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“I’ve lost my damn mind,” I say, staring out the window. I’m not just seeing things on screens now, I’m actually seeing these imaginary creatures in my real life. It’s weird, because even as that horrible thought is racing through my head, another is quick on its heels, reminding me that I have an absolutely terrible imagination. Since when did I have the creativity to come up with shit like this?
Brett’s swearing pulls me out of my thoughts. “What the fuck is that thing?”
I gape at him. “You see it too?”
He throws his arms at the window. “How the hell do you miss that?”
“I’m not crazy,” I say, more to myself than to Brett. I laugh. “I’m not crazy!”
The kaiju outside bellows again and the earth shakes. It slithers forward, tearing its way through the university’s colosseum. I quit laughing.
Had anyone been inside of that building? Who was I kidding, of course there had been. There probably were people still inside of it, being crushed by rubble and wreckage.
The snake kaiju shakes and the rest of the colosseum explodes, along with any chances that there are survivors still inside. It hisses, lashes out, and the math building is gone.
Does it have any idea what it’s doing? There’s no way that if it’s here it thinks we’re just computer simulations. It has to know.
And that means that it’s got to be here for a purpose.
I jerk upright and nearly spew the contents of my stomach. I don’t care. “I know why that thing’s here,” I say, earning a look from Brett.
“Do enlighten me, all-knowing one,” he snaps.
Taisaur and Halira were just fighting it. And if it’s here, that means that somehow it followed Lusitania and me back. But as I watch it smash into the library, I realize that it has no idea where we actually are. It probably wasn’t even sure what it would find when it came here, but I imagine it was expecting kaiju. Now that there aren’t any here to oppose it, it’s going to smash everything, just like I’d smashed that military base, hoping for the best.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I swear.
“Not clearing anything up!” Brett shrieks. Shrieks.
“We need to get to Lusitania and Isabella,” I say. “Now!”
“You have lost your damn mind,” Brett cries out. “There’s a giant fucking snake outside!”
“And you think we’re somehow safer staying here?” I don’t bother to hide my incredulity. “That thing’s clearly targeting buildings. Staying inside of one is probably the worst possible place to be.”
Outside, the student admissions office is crushed beneath an obsidian coil.
“Point,” Brett says, and we rush out of the room.
The building is swarming with confused residents. Many are darting to our side of the hall, going through whatever doors are open to get to the windows so that they can see the spectacle. It occurs to me that if that kaiju is following the same objective as me and the other players, then what I told Bret
t isn’t bullshit. The dormitory is eventually going to be a target. Fast as that thing is, there’s no telling how far off “eventually” is. I doubt very.
“Get outside!” I cry out, running for the stairs. There’s an elevator but with the power out I don’t trust it. “Get outside! Get away from the buildings!”
Mostly I’m ignored. Some people scream. Some try to push me out of the way. Only a handful follow me toward the stairs. My room is on the building’s third floor. We’ve just made it past the second when the wall explodes, a black mass tearing its way through, shearing off the top half of the building. Debris and rain fall down on us. People scream. I scream with them.
But I keep running, taking the now slick stairs three at a time, shouting and beckoning for the others to follow. Someone slips and I grab them at the landing, helping them upright before we continue on. There’s so much water and trash littering the stairs that we have to slow down or risk slipping. Sharp as these stair’s corners are, that’s a good way to get killed. If I’m going to die today, it’s going to be because the kaiju crushed me, not because I tripped trying to get away from it.
Another student isn’t so lucky. Brett stops to try and help him upright. I have a flash of recognition. It’s one of the frat boys who’d stolen his backpack the day we moved in. Brett deadlifts him and his head lolls over, spilling blood from a cut along his face. His skull is misshapen, split open by the fall.
All of which takes Brett several long moments to realize. By the time he does, me and the student I’m helping stay upright are off the stairs and halfway through the exit. Which is why we don’t die in the next instant when the kaiju’s tail returns, sweeping away the entire second floor. And Brett with it.
There’s a moment where he’s suspended in the air, rubble and pieces of the building all around him, the dead frat boy with the shattered skull beside him. His expression is one of shock, like he can’t believe any of this is real, let alone happening. And then he and that whole story are gone, slapped away into the storm.
How To Train Your Kaiju Page 14