Atlas' Burden
"In the wake of this Sydney incident, which showed the ineffective nature of the Wall of Life Program, many are questioning the government's vote here, and wondering why the Jaeger Program has been discontinued," a reporter with an Aussie accent said.
Raleigh, Charlie, the Wei Tang triplets, Mako, and Iwa were all lounging in Raleigh's room, staring at the TV which cut to show a shaky phone video of Mutavore growling and people running and screaming through the streets. The picture changed again to a hazy image on people screaming and breaking things with flames burning bright golden hues in the background. It looked like hell.
"Riots have erupted along the coastlines of several Pan Pacific cities," she continued over the outraged and panic cries of civilians and the clatter of shattered glass.
An elderly politician that Raleigh didn't care about enough to name began speaking to a crowd, "We have now relocated millions of civilians and supplies 300 miles inland to the safe zones."
"The safe zones are for the rich and powerful. What about the rest of us?" a woman cried out indignantly, panic and desperation coloring her tone.
"I believe the Wall of Life is still our best option at this time, and that's all I'm going to say about the matter. Thank you," the politician said, making a hasty retreat.
Cheung pressed a button on the remote and turned the TV off, face crinkled in disgust. He said, "I am going to go hit something," and left quickly, his brothers following him.
"Don't forget about me," Iwa said, dragging Mako from the room by her hand and closing the door behind her.
Charlie and Raleigh remained on the bed, leaning their backs against the wall with their feet straight out in front of them. Charlie growled, "Money and politics shouldn't matter when the world is at stake."
"You're right, it shouldn't, but it does," Raleigh said evenly.
She jumped off the bed and began to pace, and Raleigh watched her. She yanked on her hair, frustrated, and demanded, "How are you so calm about this?"
He smirked and said, "Because either the plan will work and we'll stop them, or suddenly it's not our problem anymore."
Charlie looked appalled, "That's the grimmest, most comforting fatalistic outlook I've ever heard, you damn fruit loop."
He smiled and shrugged, folding one of his knees up against his chest, "Was I wrong?"
She huffed and grumbled, "No."
Turning, the photos on the wall caught her eye and she peered at them curiously. The first to catch her eye was a picture with a blonde man who looked a lot like Raleigh, a red-haired woman with his bright blue eyes who was heavily pregnant, and two little blonde boys smiling big toothy grins.
"Is this your family?" she asked, changing the subject. He never talked about them, and only Yancy was ever mentioned in passing. She hadn't known he had another sibling.
"It was," he said, voice deceptively light. He walked up behind her and pointed, "That's my father, Richard, my mother, Dominique, who was pregnant with my little sister when this was taken, Jazmine, and that's Yancy and I."
"What happened to them?" she asked. Surely the family of the famous solo Ranger would be well known.
"My mom got terminal cancer," he said, pointing to another picture, of a bald woman with the same lovely blue eyes reclining in a hospital bed, a tired smile on her face, "And my sister was hit and killed by a drunk driver only three weeks before her death," thumb brushing over a picture of three graves with flowers laid carefully on the headstones, "My dad took off after that and we never saw him again. Yancy was barely eighteen and I was fifteen, and we were alone until after I graduated from high school a year early. We joined Jaeger Academy that summer on a whim of Yancy's."
She turned and stared up at him in shock, "You didn't want to be a Ranger?" She couldn't imagine that. She couldn't imagine not wanting to pilot a jaeger. She had always wanted to be a soldier or a Ranger, like her dad. She couldn't imagine Raleigh Becket as anything but the solemn, commanding, dirty-fighting Ranger extraordinaire that he was.
He stared at her, and the corner of his mouth twitched, "We couldn't afford college. I was resigned to working dead end jobs, maybe being able to afford a small house at some point and living a mediocre life."
"Liar," she growled, poking his chest, and hurting her finger in the process because fuck she could bounce a quarter off those muscles, "You would have made something of yourself. You don't have it in you to be mediocre."
Before she knew what was happening, she was wrapped in his arms and his cheek was laying on her head. She returned the hug fiercely, arms wrapped around his rib cage and head pressed against his chest. He smelled like leather and Gipsy steel and standard-issue soap, and she felt alive and… safe. Safe from kaijus and politics and missions where her life was on the line and the world was at stake. They stayed that way for a long time.
Dr. Newton Geiszler threw pieces of equipment in a pile metal clattering and rattling as it hit the ground. He hooked up the cables and grabbed his recorder.
"Kaiju-Human Drift Experiment. Take 1," he stuffed it in his pocket and kept talking as he laid out another cable, "The uh, the brain segment is the frontal lobe, um, chances are the segment is far too damaged to Drift with. Unscientific aside, Hermann, if you're listening to this... well I'm either alive, and I've proven that what I've just done works, in which case ha ha I won. Or I'm dead and I'd like you to know that it's all your fault. It really is you know, you drove me to this, in which case ha ha, I also won… sort of. I'm going in in three, two, one."
He pressed the button and yelped at the sudden influx of information. The Drift is –
His dad, passionately explaining why biology is so fascinating. It's scientific debates and labs and white coats with not enough pockets and too many stains on the sleeves. It's kaiju blue light and gnashing teeth and the Precursors and the chittering of machines and the growling of thousands of Knifeheads and Yamarashis and Mutavores. It's crackling blue light and slitted pupils and darkness.
It's cut off and Hermann was yanking his makeshift technology from his head, and he's being dragged into a chair. His eyelid was pulled open, and everything was blurry and he was shaking slightly. The information… he needed more but the brain had no more. It was ripped from its whole self, cut apart to be studied and its knowledge was fragmented at best.
What he did know was that things were far worse than they could have possibly imagined.
The Marshal, Raleigh, and Herc are in LOCCENT with Tendo, discussing something with lowered voices and tense posture when the doctor limped in. "Marshal, Marshal! I need to talk to you," he yelled.
Marshal Pentecost sighed and said, "Not now, Dr. Gottlieb. I'm sure you can appreciate how busy we are." He turned back to Raleigh and Herc and was about to begin discussing their strategy anew, but the doctor was not going to be ignored.
"Newton created a neural bridge from garbage and Drifted with a kaiju," he snapped out sharply.
All three Rangers turned in shock and Raleigh Becket's polite expression turned positively murderous, and his hands curled into fists. Herc leaned his shoulder against the others, and he deliberately uncurled his fingers, his rage disappearing behind a calm mask once again. They all rushed to the research division.
"I found him prone, and he's… sort of dazed. I don't exactly know what to do," Dr. Gottlieb explained, his concern and panic evident in his voice. His friend was sitting in a desk chair with glazed eyes and blood running from his nose. His hand shook dramatically as he lifted a glass of water to his lips.
He looked up as they walked in, pointed, and grinned maniacally, "I told you it would work."
"Yes, you did," the Marshal said carefully, wary of the fury blooming under the surface of Raleigh's cool façade and the red ring of blood that seemed to have overtaken the disheveled doctor's normally blue-gray left eye. "Well, what did you see?"
"You know it was only a fragment of a brain so really all I was able to get was a series of uh images or, or, or impressions like when you blink your eyes over and over and over again and all you really see are frames. It was emotional and –"
The Marshal grabbed a nearby chair and sat next to the rambling scientist, saying gently but firmly, "Newton, okay, Newton. Newton, look at me."
"Yes sir," the man said, stopping and staring at the Marshal.
The Marshal made eye contact and said calmly, "Now I want you to take your time, and be very specific."
"Okay," he breathed shakily, making a visible effort to compose himself, "Okay, well I don't feel like they're just following some sort of animalistic urge you know, just hunting and gathering. I think they're attacking us under orders – like Ranger Becket said, the creators of the clones."
"That's impossible," Dr. Gottlieb denied.
"Is it impossible?" the other man said, getting worked up.
"It's impossible," Dr. Gottlieb scoffed.
Dr. Geiszler yelled, "You know what, why don't you –"
"YOU, shut up!" The Marshal yelled at Dr. Gottlieb, to Herc's amusement, and turned back to the other, still quivering in his seat, "You, keep talking."
"These beings, these masters, they're colonists. They overtake worlds, they just – they just consume them, and then, and then they move on to the next, and they've been here before in a sort of a trial run. It was the dinosaurs, but the atmosphere wasn't conducive, right? So, they waited it out, and they waited it out, and now you know with all the ozone depletion and carbon monoxide polluted waters, well we practically terraformed it for them. Cause now they're coming back, and it's perfect. You see the first wave, that was just the hounds. Categories I through IV it was nothing! Their sole purpose was to aim for the populated areas and take out the vermin – us! The second wave, that is the exterminators, and they will finish the job, and then, the new tenants will take possession."
Raleigh was leaning into Herc to provide the older man with support. The Australian was shivering at the picture Newt was painting, and even the immovable Becket's face was pale at the thought. The Marshal stood from the chair and paced, unsettled.
"You see, the reason that I found the identical DNA in the two separate kaiju organs is because they are grown! Just like Ranger Becket and I said!" he exclaimed.
"Newton, I need you to do it again. I need more information," the Marshal ordered gravely.
"Well, I – I can't do it again. I mean, not unless you have a fresh kaiju brain lying around." Dr. Gottlieb saw the matching contemplative expressions on Ranger Becket and the Marshal's face and evidently, so did Newton, as the man asked curiously, "Do you?"
Charlie's head had snapped up from her sketchbook when there was a knock on the door and Max's head perked up from his place at her side. She had drawn Gipsy Danger and sketched the jaeger's symbol in the upper right corner of the page as well. She closed the sketchbook and set it on her dresser before opening the door. Raleigh had come to her room, and she could tell he was agitated. His brow was furrowed and the fingers of his left hand spasmed occasionally as though shocked.
She was caught off guard and asked, "What's eating you, Ray?"
He seemed to snap out of a thoughtful haze and smirked, "Nothing, yet. Do you want to grab Max and go for a walk with me?"
She smiled and fought the blush rising in her cheeks and said casually, "Sure."
Charlie snapped Max's leash in place, and they wandered the Shatterdome with Raleigh, sometimes talking, sometimes quiet, until they had reached the helicopter pads and walked out into the cold rain, and the blond Ranger seemed to calm slowly. His fingers stopped twitching and his shoulders relaxed. They sat outside, watching the rain from under an overhang, and Max leaned against her thigh with a grunt.
Ray sighed and ran his fingers through his hair – the damp ends stood straight up, and Charlie grinned at the sight. He looked so calm and put together most times and acted with such authority that she figured most people had forgotten that he was only twenty-six. Twenty-six and twenty-two – her own age – and already both had carried the weight of millions of lives on their shoulders. She figured that Ray got just as overwhelmed as she did sometimes – more so, with what, close to a decade of service under his belt, his brother's death, and the strain of command to add to the regular – at least to her – problems that came with being a Ranger.
Raleigh had draped his Gipsy jacket over Charlie's shoulders before she had even realized she was shivering, and she burrowed into the borrowed body heat. She pushed her arms through the sleeves, folding the extra fabric and gripping it in her fists to keep the warmth in and the cold out.
"Won't you get cold, Ray?" she asked.
He smirked, "I'm from Alaska, Charlie. They call the Shatterdome there the 'Icebox' for a reason, and I'm wearing a thick sweater."
"Just you wait 'till we're somewhere warm then, you damn polar bear," she grumbled, and he smiled softly at her before turning back to look out at the rain.
She leaned carefully on his right shoulder with a sigh of her own, afraid he'd tense up or back away from the contact. His arm moved behind her and came around her shoulders instead, and she relaxed into his side – he was so warm. She bunched up the sleeves around her wrists, grabbed his empty left hand between her own and pressed her cold fingers into the warmth of his much larger palm. His cupped hers and rubbed a gentle friction into the freezing knuckles.
When she was warmer, she stared at their intertwined hands and was fascinated by the scarring on his. With a careful fingernail, she traced the lines from where they emerged beneath his sleeve to the tips of his fingers, feeling him shiver as she explored the unique texture engraved in his hands. There were hollow silver circles where his fingerprints should be, they'd been burned off, and over each of his knuckles, all connected by straight silvery lines that disappeared beneath his clothes.
"Are you warmer now?" he murmured slowly, resting his cheek on her head.
"Mmhmm."
He asked reluctantly, "Do you want to go back inside?"
"Not for a while yet," she hummed contentedly.
Down in the Bone Slums of Hong Kong, where crowds of people walked, and neon lights lit the dark streets. Newton Geiszler was searching through the crowds, occasionally shining a UV flashlight on a red card, causing the white design of a kaiju's face to show up on the front. He shone the flashlight on a red sign, and it was marked with the same symbol and an arrow pointing left, and smiled, saying, "Hello."
He did the same thing on the side of a red shop and walked in with the ringing of a bell. He stared at the shelves full of sealed glass jars. A man wearing tinted glasses and had a balding head with long wispy brown hair covering his neck whispered, "Are you looking for some kaiju bone powder?"
"Some – some bone… some – some bone powder? Uh, no. Why would I want that?" he asked, confused.
"Male potency," the shop worker said with a primal grunt, "I take it myself."
Newt gave a polite smile that looked more like a grimace, saying, "I see. Uh, no, thank you. I'm looking for Hannibal Chau."
The man gave a signal, and another worker locked the door of the shop with a click. Newt startled and glanced between the workers warily, but the first man just walked towards the shelf-covered wall. He said in a much deeper and less friendly tone, "Come," and pressed a hidden button on the side of some shelves. Stepping aside he commented, "Hannibal Chao, huh? Good luck."
Newt walked through the receding shelves and stared in shock at the large ornate room with red and gold designs, graceful pillars, and kaiju parts floating in a yellow solution. "Oh my god this place is heaven! That's a – that's a lymph gland from a Cat. II, and what are you working on here – is this a cuticle! In mint condition? Is that a kaiju skin parasite? I've never seen them alive before. They, they usually die as soon as the kaiju falls. I – I thought you couldn't keep them alive."
"You can if you soak them in ammonia," a new voice said. A man stepped forward wearing black goggle-like glasses, a jacket with crushed velvet designs engraved on it, a blood red shirt and pants, gold tie, and black dress shoes topped with gold plates that clinked slightly with every step like spurs. "What do you want?"
"I'm looking for Hannibal Chau. I was told he was here?" Newt asked timidly.
"Who wants to know?"
"I really can't say," he said, but the man unsheathed a switchblade and shoved the point up his nostril until he was standing on the tips of his toes to keep it from cutting through the skin. It was put away as quickly as it had been drawn when Newt screamed, "Ah! Stacker Pentecost sent me. Ah! Ow! Oh that – that's great. That's real great. So, I take it you're Hannibal Chau, right?" He held his nose and snarked, backing away.
"Do you like my name? I took it from my favorite historical character and my second favorite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn. Now, tell me what you want, before I gut you like a pig and feed you to the skin louse."
Tendo was carrying a bagel in his mouth and juggling four coffee mugs when a mechanical voice said, "Movement in the Breach. Double event. Two signatures. Dilation indicator, Category IV." He looked at the jagged lines of seismic activity being scribbled out onto two papers and the holographic image of the Breach expanding with horror.
The Kaiju Alarm went out and the Rangers filed in with their drive suits on and their helmets held under their arms within minutes. He saw Striker Eureka's pilots walk in first in their gray-green drive suits, with Raleigh not far behind them in his scuffed dark purple. After that came Indigo's pilots in their blue and black suits, Cherno's charcoal and slate gray, and Crimson Typhoon's triplets in red and gold.
Tendo said, "The Breach was exposed at 2300 hours. We have two signatures. Both Cat. IV's, codenames Otachi and Leatherback. They'll reach Hong Kong within the hour."
"Evacuate the city, shut down the bridges. I want every single civilian under refuge right now. Crimson Typhoon, Cherno Alpha, I want you to front line the harbor. Striker Eureka stay back, look after the coastline. Gipsy Danger and Katana Indigo, you stay put on standby. Let's go!" The Marshal said, clapping his hands.
That made enough sense to Tendo. Despite Raleigh's skills, he'd been working multiple full-time jobs with no real rest for years, despite Tendo's own increasingly pointed emails to the Marshal. It would be good for him to take this break, even if only to analyze the fighting styles of each jaeger he was unfamiliar with. And with Indigo as well, the Marshal's order checked out – they needed a Mark-5 to carry the bomb, and though Striker's frame was more ideal, the Hansen's jaeger was also better able to keep his distance with those sweet air missiles. Seeing the pilots nod, he had no doubt they'd followed the Marshal's chain of thought, even if some of them might not like it.
Charlie hugged Raleigh and he said gruffly into her hair, but with a hidden fear and concern that Tendo and evidently the other Rangers picked up on, "Try not to die, Charlie."
"That's the plan, Ray," she smirked back, and ran after her dad.
Raleigh watched her go, eyes dark with worry, and Tendo raised his eyebrow. He hadn't known his best friend was becoming attached to the fiery young Ranger. It made sense though. She reminded him so much of the Becket Boys before Yancy's death, and that kind of spirit would capture his friend's attention. But when had Raleigh Becket and Charlie Hansen become a thing? How had he missed it?
Tendo watched the three jaegers prepared out the glass window, and the other two were put on standby but readied just in case. Raleigh said softly over the hubbub, but still loud enough that Tendo and Stacker could hear him, "Sir, I've been working the same pace and never let a kaiju by me for years. What's changed?"
"You have backup now, Raleigh," the Marshal told him just as softly, "I need you for the Breach run, and I need you here with me so that you understand how to command from LOCCENT as well."
Tendo's eyes widened in shock. He knew what the man was implying and knew that he wouldn't be around much longer. Was the Marshal grooming the Becket Boy to be his successor? He took in the almost identical stances and the way they wore leadership like a cloak around their shoulders. Really, Tendo thought Stacker couldn't have picked a better guy to continue his legacy.
"LOCCENT, Striker's got the ball and we're on a roll. In position and awaiting orders," Charlie's voice chirped over the comms. HercandCharlie were Drifting well, and watched the helicopters carry Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha past with worry and trepidation for their newfound family. Brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles that they hadn't had since Scott Hansen had been kicked out of the Jaeger Program and Scissure killed Charlie's mom.
The Marshal said over the comms and their backs automatically straightened, "Remain in the miracle mile. Engage at your discretion. Keep your eyes open, these Cat. IVs are the biggest we've ever seen, both in size and weight."
"Cherno Alpha reaching target zone. Disengaging transport," Aleksis said, "Cherno Alpha in position. Miracle mile. Cherno Alpha holding the coastline. The Beacon is on."
The massive jaeger ran point with Crimson behind them and to their left and Striker further back to the right. Rain fell and the waves crashed, and the jaegers waited for the monsters to arrive.
There was a choir singing lowly from somewhere and a line of people walked up the stairs under the bone-white skull of a kaiju baring sharpened teeth. Some wore elaborate headdresses or rang bells, and others bowed their head to the dead monster as they passed. Newt had heard about kaiju worshipping cults, and seen how vehemently the Rangers hated the practice, but he'd never seen their rites this close before.
"Look at them. They believe that the kaiju were sent from heaven. That the gods are expressing their displeasure at our behavior, the silly bastards," Hannibal Chau said over the rain to Newt from a balcony across the street, lit by paper lanterns and neon lights that cast cruel shadows that danced in the empty eye sockets.
"And what do you believe?" Newt asked the man curiously.
He turned saying, "Well, I believe that kaiju bone powder is 500 bucks a pound. What do you want?"
"I need to access a kaiju brain. Completely intact," he said.
The man was already shaking his head, "No, no, no, the skull plate is so dense that by the time you drill into it –"
"The brain is rotted away, but I'm talking about the secondary brain. Now we both know that the kaiju are so large that they need two brains to move around. I want to get my hands on that," Newt explained.
He hummed and ranted, "What the hell do you want a secondary brain for anyway. I mean, every part of the kaiju sells. Cartilage, spleen, liver – even the crap! One cubic meter of crap has enough phosphorous in it to fertilize a whole field! But the brain… too much ammonia! So, what's the deal, little fella?"
Newt smirked and said smugly, "Well, that's classified, so I couldn't tell you, even if I wanted to," he took off his glasses to wipe off the rain and boasted, "But it is pretty cool, so I might tell you… I'm gonna tell you. I figured out how to Drift with a kaiju."
Hannibal's head snapped around and he said lowly, "Are you funnin' me, son?"
"It's fascinating how their minds work. Every single kaiju's mind is connected, the species has like a – like a hive mind, and –" he stopped when the black-market merchant peeled his left eyelid opened and stared at his bloody red iris.
"Holy Jesus. You've gone and done it, haven't you?" he said in a low dangerous tone, the dead kaiju's skull scowling cruelly in the reflection on his black goggles.
That would have scared the scientist, except it had nothing on Raleigh Becket's own mad snarl, so he justified, "I did it a little bit, yeah."
The man shoved him away and walked off growling, "You goddamned moron."
All over the city, the Kaiju Alarms started wailing.
