Newt knows he made one of the biggest discoveries of possibly ever, and he's proud, and he's not going to stop talking about it but sometimes he gets flashes of kaiju memories and something in him, some latent anger or dissatisfaction or something cracks inside of him and he has to hold himself back.
He's really a very mild mannered guy. Sure, he devoted his life to studying an alien race that they've just eradicated from the planet, and sure, no one would listen to him and then he almost got killed in the streets, but that's nothing, that's just part of the job.
He doesn't have reason to be angry. He'll publish a ton of papers on the kaiju. He'll go down in history. He'll focus on his old studies in artificial tissue regeneration. He'll keep his kaiju parts, living in their little tanks, as a quaint reminder.
He's started thinking of humans differently now.
He goes out for a beer with Hermann, who insists on going to a restaurant instead of a bar, and then orders a water.
He's subtle. "You uh, ever think about those weird kaiju thoughts, eh, Herm?"
He smirks, fiddles with his shirtsleeves, does everything in his power to seem disinterested.
"Yes."
"That's not a very informative answer," he says. "You're not giving me much here, buddy."
Hermann is, as always, unamused. "You were privy to the same memories," he says. "Fascinating, yes, but neither amusing nor terrifying enough to factor into my daily life."
"Oh," he says. "Yeah. That's what I thought."
Hermann smiles thin lipped at him. "And you? I imagine you're quite aroused by them."
"Mm," he says, taking a sip of his beer, stalling, and then he realizes what he's trying to say. He laughs, maybe a little forced.
"Right," he says. "Right, because I – right because you think I'm like, obsessed with the kaiju. Like I'd masturbate to the thought of them. Right."
He raises his glass in acknowledgement and Hermann smiles and so this is what it's like if they're friends.
He gets less subtle, a couple beers in. "So, uh, do you like, ever think about the human race?"
He pauses, drums his fingers on the table and is thinking this might be maybe a bad thing to admit so he retracts a bit. "Like, you know, how you do feel about, the human race as a whole, like it defeated these big awesome beasts who had like, no reason to think they'd ever fail and then it beat them."
"Would make you kinda angry," he mumbles, into his drink, "if you were them."
Hermann frowns. "I'm afraid I didn't catch that last part."
"Pretty awesome," he says, voice cracking, just a bit. "That we beat 'em. You know."
Hermann nods. "Yes."
"So you gonna... have a drink, or, like, a shot, or –" he's sweating, just a bit, but maybe Hermann's just too sober to admit any weird thoughts.
"No thank you," he says. "But I've enjoyed your company. Oddly."
Newt forces a smile. "Yeah. Great fun, buddy. Have to do it another time."
They don't.
He spends all of his time at his lab, looking at his two kaiju brains, wanting to drift with one, feeling like there's something he's missing.
He can't. Drift. There are only the two of them, he can't risk damaging them.
His technology isn't there yet, he has to wait, he has to see them every day and know he can't drift with them and wonder if what he's doing is even what the kaiju wanted.
Maybe it's just what he wants.
Mako pays him a surprise visit.
He almost pees himself, turning around to see her there, wondering if she can read his face, if she can read his thoughts, if drifting with a human makes that possible because when he looks at the kaiju brain now he can see things that were never in his mind.
He swallows. "Um, Mako, hi, uh, hey."
She offers him the hint of a smile, looking uncomfortably around the room. "Dr. Geiszler," she says, and he swallows, because of course they're not on first name terms. "I am here to offer you a position."
He blinks. He blinks again, for good measure. "Doing what?"
"Research for weapons development," she says. "To ensure that if another portal opens, we will be ready."
He swallows. "So you uh, you think the kaiju maybe aren't gone? Like, they uh, could come back and –"
He trails off, and she waits, patiently, until it becomes clear that he's done. "Will you take the position?"
He thinks about it. He thinks fast, in that overly quick way that skips over any sort of reasoning but makes him feel feverish and excited. "No," he says. "Yes. Um, can I have a uh, a second or, a day, or –"
Mako nods. She hands him a card, and as he looks down at it, reads it, she leaves.
He looks at the kaiju brain and he wonders if he drifted with it if he'd know what to do. He knows not to do that.
He looks at the card. He looks at her name, at the title below it, and he swallows. If she came in person they must really want him.
He looks at the kaiju brain.
They'll have resources, there. They'll have resources, and information, and people with knowledge about the portal.
They'll have cameras.
He'll have to do it somewhere else anyway. It doesn't matter if his day job is somewhere with security and clearances and people who want to make sure the kaiju never come back.
He'll have access to everything he needs, even if smuggling it out will be an issue.
He takes the job.
It's like old times, not even far from one of the old jaeger bases, but they're not allowed in there. No one is.
They're working on smaller projects, more directed projects, looking for smaller, more effective weapons, now that they have all the time in the world, now that the kaiju may never come back.
He's practically in charge.
Mako's in charge.
But he's the one who knows the kaiju best, knows them better than anyone else does, knows their purpose and he's bursting to share everything but instead he just shares his findings, the physical ones, about where they're weak and how to attack them.
He figures out quickly how to take advantage, realizes that they'll need kaiju to test weapons on, and for that they'll need to replicate, well, not all of them, but parts of them at least, have to perfect that technology and he gets right to work on that.
He uses the pregnant kaiju as an excuse to focus on reproduction and the first time someone asks he explains "it's, uh, well, you know, the uh, most important part of the um, kaiju because –" he stops, adjusts his glasses, breathes – "uh, well, they adapted, right?"
Reproducing is important.
He's not angry anymore. He's not very emotional. He's just focused. He comes home from work and he checks his tanks, checks how they're growing. If they're growing.
He spends his days finding the weaknesses and he spends his nights finding ways around them. He spends his nights not sleeping but that's fine because the kaiju memories will come on their own.
He's never alone at work.
At first it's scientists, all of the time. Always someone asking him for something. Then Mako, checking in.
And then it's Raleigh Becket.
He gets suspicious, just a little, wonders if Raleigh is suspicious. Because he visits him a couple times, and then a couple more, and then he's there most days.
He explains that there's not much he's doing, not much need for a jaeger pilot with a construction background. And, as an afterthought, says he's very interested in the kaiju.
Newt smiles and nods and sweats and mentions offhand about how maybe he's going to get his kaiju tattoos removed. Maybe he doesn't want to be reminded of them anymore.
Raleigh says he should keep them. That they won, and it's over, and if it's not they'll win the next time and there's nothing wrong with a reminder that your enemies can be defeated.
Newt nods. Enemies.
Newt just wants to know where Hermann went, why he's not here, why he's not working on the resistance and he hopes inside a little that it's because he doesn't want the kaiju gone either. That he felt it too, that they need to exist.
Instead he gets Raleigh Becket sitting next to kaiju guts, shaking his head and wondering if they'll ever understand what the hell these things are.
"It's crazy," he says. "That they've been attacking for years and we still know next to nothing about them."
"We should drift," Newt says.
Raleigh looks at him like he's crazy. He asks, "are you crazy?"
"No, I mean it," Newt says, and he does, he wants someone else to know, he can't be the only one who knows. "You'd get the kaiju memories. And they, uh, you know, they don't make any damn sense to me, but maybe if you saw them you'd –"
Raleigh shakes his head. "I don't want to know."
"But, you said that you did."
Raleigh shakes his head.
"No, look, come on, it's fine it's not anything bad you know they're just well, lots of blackness, and some aliens, and you know, it's – you can learn, well, I don't know. Let's just try it."
Raleigh doesn't come around so much after that.
He's shifting, his perspective is shifting every moment that he spends waiting for his technology to revive the kaiju and he doesn't really dislike humanity anymore, that was just a knee jerk reaction to what he'd been through. The kaiju don't have emotions, they just have needs, very strong needs to exist, and to destroy.
To follow the instructions of their creator.
But they don't have emotions and he manages to stop equating their need for destruction with the destruction of the human race and realizes that there's more to it. That they could use kaiju.
He's not sleeping enough because there's so much to do, so much to be done, he can't be the only person who sees it, sees how important the kaiju are, how useful. Robots can't reproduce, but the kaiju – he could have his own army, deep in the sea, he could be ready for anything.
If they could just figure out how to open a portal.
He brings that up at work, says they should research that portal, how it happened, how to replicate it, maybe launch an offensive on somewhere, like, if they can find somewhere, and the next thing he knows he's getting strange glances all of the time.
And then Raleigh Becket is back in the lab suggesting that he's a little too attached, that it'd be a good idea to take a step back. Talking about how those five years without the jaegers were good for him, after all, even though he hated not being a pilot, and maybe that's what Newt needs.
He mentions how there are more tattoos, now.
Newt ignores him.
There are more tattoos than anyone knows about, there's a big one, on his back, a drawing of his own creation.
He's filling it in as he's filling in his own kaiju, as he's growing the pieces, attaching them, he's keeping his kaiju in that abandoned jaeger base because nowhere else is big enough. He's trespassing, he's stealing, he's spending time and money that he doesn't have because it's worth it, this is worth it, the kaiju have to be alive, they have to be they need to be he's just carrying that out.
When Hermann shows up he's so invested, so sleep deprived, so completely ready that he doesn't even think twice about taking him there, showing him this kaiju, the one he's making, putting together, he's got all the living parts and some of them put together already.
It doesn't even occur to him that Hermann would object.
"We – but, you saw the – you know it has to happen," he says, reeling, shocked, betrayed. "You know the – they need me, they need us, you can't tell me you don't understand that, you have to understand that!"
Hermann looks at him with eyes full of fear and something else that Newt stopped acknowledging in people a long time ago.
"You had to – I thought you came here because you knew, because you felt it too!"
"I did," Hermann says. "I do. I can help you."
"Great," he says. "Okay, so, well, I guess you can look at the data and I think I have it all set up so we can –"
He looks over, Hermann's shaking his head, he has his phone out, and Newt's not about to lose everything so he tackles him, fights him, wrestles him, bites him. Gets the phone, crushes it, crushes it a thousand times into the floor.
Hermann puts up a good fight but he's just not strong enough.
Newt apologizes as he tightens the ropes.
"I thought we were friends, Herm," he says. "Did you know that? I thought we were friends. And I know, you're thinking, why would your friend tie you up but you made me. This has to happen, okay, Herm? It just has to, you know it, you saw those memories, we were destined to make our own kaiju. It has to happen."
"You're wrong," Hermann says, struggling, and Newt shoves a wad of cloth into his mouth to shut him up.
"It has to happen."
It doesn't work.
Maybe he's rushing. He's definitely rushing, he's worried Hermann told someone else, that all his work will be for nothing. He's weeks ahead of schedule. It should still work. Maybe he just doesn't have the knowledge.
Maybe after all of this time he's still missing something.
It works for a minute, for a minute he thinks he's done it, thinks he's solved all of his problems, for a minute there's a giant kaiju standing right in front of him, breathing, actually breathing, and he has nothing to fear.
For a minute.
The coroner's report attributes cause of death to suffocation.
Hermann Gottlieb tells the expected story. The kaiju tried to attack, immediately, would have killed both of them if it wasn't mostly restrained, and then it collapsed on Newt. That it was all over quickly.
He never tells the real story.
It's there, in his memories, but so many things are there and only some of them are his.
He does his research, and he keeps his mouth shut, and he doesn't tell anyone.
Sometimes when he's sleeping he'll remember it. Remember Newt crushed under the giant monster, sobbing, unable to get out from under him.
It was slow.
And that's not the only thing he lies about.
The kaiju never attacked. It never even tried to attack, just stood there, magestic, docile. Awaiting orders.
And, well, sometimes that makes him think things.