Sasha was helping a tech rewire some of the vital systems in Cherno's computer core, her arms elbow-deep in wires and cables, when Aleksis' bellow sounded through the Jaeger hangar.
"ILYA!"
The tech working alongside her winced, but Sasha just fought back a grin and resumed her work. Whatever Ilya had done now, it must have been amusing. Aleksis might rant and rave awhile, but the old man's habits and occasional pranks were generally harmless.
Since the two of them had become Rangers, Sasha's family had visited the Shatterdome several times, and her brothers had all established some degree of rapport with the techs and engineers here. Aleksis' family dropped by far less often – since their wedding she had seen his parents only once, and that had been a brief visit to inform him that his grandparents had passed away. The only member of his family who came by with any regularity was his great-uncle, Ilya Kaidonovsky… but the old man dropped by on a regular basis, almost as if to make up for the lack of visits by other family members.
Ilya was currently sitting on a supply crate nearby, leaning forward on his cane and half-dozing as he waited for his nephew and niece-in-law to finish tending to Cherno. Bald save for a ring of silvery-white hair ringing his shiny scalp, he nonetheless sported a full beard that reached nearly to his breastbone. His hands were gnarled and worn and he walked with a hitching limp, the result of slipping on an icy dock and badly breaking his leg and hip years ago. But despite his advanced years, he was still quick in wit and bright in eye, and often acted as if he were a man half his age.
Right now Sasha was willing to wager that Ilya was fully awake, but feigning sleep so as to quietly witness whatever drama he had just set into motion play out. She pulled her hands free of the wires and turned to watch as Aleksis climbed down the scaffolding that bracketed Cherno's side. This was bound to be amusing.
Aleksis finally reached the hangar floor, and he stormed over to where Ilya sat, eyes flashing. Maintenance crews hurriedly scrambled to get out of his way, as if he were a Kaiju storming the shore. Sasha had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Why so many were scared of the tall Ranger she couldn't understand – he might look intimidating and put on a show of being gruff and aloof, but he was a softie at heart.
Ilya remained hunched over, eyes closed, until Aleksis was standing directly over him. Then he opened his eyes and looked up at the taller Kaidonovsky, giving him an impish sort of smile.
"Is there a problem?" he asked, the picture of innocence.
In response Aleksis thrust his hands forward, showing him a bundle of white cloth. "This."
Ilya raised an eyebrow. "What did you go and take that out for? Do you know how many steps I had to climb to put it there? All my hard work and aches and pains for nothing, boy!" His voice was grouchy, but his eyes danced merrily.
"That doesn't matter," Aleksis snapped. "There is to be no food in Cherno's Conn Pod!"
"Food?" repeated Sasha, and she left off her work and went over to investigate. "What do you mean?"
In response Aleksis unwrapped the cloth, revealing several slices of bread liberally sprinkled with a coarse white powder that appeared to be salt. She furrowed her brow in confusion. If this was some sort of joke on Ilya's part, she wasn't sure she got it. He was fond of planting things in their quarters whenever he visited, but it was usually silly stuff like balloons or a music player that would start playing polka songs at random intervals. But he had never hidden anything in Cherno's Conn Pod before, understanding that the Jaeger was off-limits to that sort of thing, and how salt and bread were supposed to be amusing was beyond her.
"He is right," she said at length. "The Shatterdome has a rat problem, and the last thing we need is for them to decide Cherno is a food source. Besides, isn't bread expensive for you?"
Ilya grinned. "Nothing is too good for the domovoi! Isn't that right, Aleksis?"
Aleksis groaned. "Not this again, Uncle."
"Domovoi?" Sasha thought she remembered the word. It had popped up in books she had read as a child, though she could no longer remember specifics. "What are you talking about?"
"You don't know the domovoi?" Ilya demanded. "Honestly, does no one tell their children the old tales anymore?" He threw his hands up in exasperation, almost knocking the bread out of Aleksis' hands. "I would have thought you'd at least tell her the basics, Aleksis… you used to love the old tales of Baba Yaga and the Firebird and Katschei the Deathless…"
Aleksis rolled his eyes. "We've had more important things to worry about."
"Bah!" Ilya waved him away and turned to Sasha. "The domovoi, my girl. The house spirit. The guardian of the hearth. He watches the household, maintains peace and order, and on occasion helps with the housework. To mistreat him is to bring bad luck on the household, but to honor him is to ensure good fortune." He pointed to the half-wrapped bundle in Aleksis' arms. "That was SUPPOSED to be an offering for him! To ensure your good luck!"
"Oh… I see." She nodded, mostly to humor the old man. Another odd quirk of Aleksis' great-uncle – he had a deep love for mythology and folklore, and it seemed his belief in the creatures and spirits of the old stories had only deepened with the passing years. Aleksis' family apparently tolerated his belief as just another eccentricity, but the Shatterdome crews were still getting used to his quirks whenever he visited, such as leaving the shower running for the bannik (and consequently using up most of the hot water) or advising everyone to stay out of the water at certain times of the year to avoid the rusalka.
"Uncle," Aleksis said in a tone of long-suffering, "the domovoi is just a story. There is no domovoi in the Shatterdome, and certainly not in our Jaeger's Conn Pod. You might worry about offending spirits or rusalka or whatever you believe in this week, but we have very real monsters of the deep to be worrying about."
Ilya didn't seem at all hurt by Aleksis' words. Instead he raised a hand and shook a finger at him. "No such thing as the old spirits, you say? And yet you two are so fond of telling me the stories about Cherno Alpha. How he listens to you and obeys your commands, how he protects you and the Shatterdome… how he's more than just a machine." He chuckled softly. "How he lives."
Aleksis and Sasha shared a long look at that. Ilya was the only one they had ever told about their suspicions regarding Cherno, and he had never given them a hard time about their claims until now. But what did Cherno have to do with…
"I'd say you have your own guardian spirit within the Shatterdome," he said with a wide smile. "Your own domovoi. He has just chosen to take on a form of metal instead of flesh." His gaze moved to the packet of bread, then back up to the two Rangers. "But perhaps he'd prefer another offering than food, given that he's a machine… but what are you two willing to give him in return for all he has done for you? Only you can decide that."
The citizens of Hong Kong's Bone Slums were used to seeing odd people walking the streets. After all, when your home was built in the shadow of a Kaiju skeleton and within the boundaries of a nuclear strike zone, you grew accustomed to strangeness. And even with so many varieties of strangeness mingling in the streets of the Slums, few people aside from the occasional brave tourist gave much notice to things and people that would have drawn stares in any other city.
Hannibal Chau's henchmen, with their pressed suits and gaudy jewelry, were a common enough sight that no one would have looked twice at them even if they didn't have guns and knives to ensure curious stares were turned away. The nuns and priests of the Kaiju Cult occasionally made the rounds in the slums, collecting donations and searching for possible converts among the pedestrians, and their flowing robes and elaborate headdresses didn't garner much attention anymore. Even the crop of mutants that had sprung up in the wake of the tactical nukes that had killed Reckoner – unfortunates born with misshapen limbs, extra fingers, discolored skin – went mostly ignored, save for those who had chosen to make their abnormality into a sideshow of sorts in hopes of earning their keep.
It took a special kind of strangeness to stand out here… and the bespectacled white guy sauntering down the street at that moment exhibited just that.
A group of factory workers making their way home stopped to stare as Newton Geizler strolled by, bobbing his head and timing his steps to match the music playing in his earbuds. It was a warm day, and so he'd left his coat back in the lab, leaving his shirt sleeves rolled up to display his vibrant Kaiju tattoos to the world. Under one arm he carried a clear canister of yellowish-green fluid in which a misshapen lump of tissue bobbed about; under the other he held an oblong package wrapped in stained brown paper. His hair was uncombed and sticking out at crazy angles, his face bore a few days' worth of stubble, and his tie hung loose about his neck and flapped against his chest with every step he took.
Just about everyone looking at the scientist almost instantly decided they had to be seeing a lunatic, and kept their distance accordingly. But Newt didn't care what they thought. He had his music, his Kaiju tissue sample to take home and analyze, and his butcher-shop scraps for Spike's dinner. All was currently right in his world, and no amount of staring from anyone else could change that.
He was so absorbed in the energetic beat of "Bohemian Rhapsody" coming over his earbuds that he didn't see the priestess who had stepped out to block his path until he'd almost run right into her. He skidded to a halt, dropping his package and Kaiju sample in the process.
"Oy!" He stumbled back, arms flailing. "Watch where you're going, why don't you!"
The priestess gave a little half-smile, then reached out and hooked a finger around the cord leading to his earbuds. With a swift jerk she pulled them out of his ears.
"My apologies," she said in a dark, smooth voice. "Are you all right. Dr. Geizler?"
He ignored the question, bending down to collect his things with a grumble. Thankfully the package hadn't busted open, and the worst his Kaiju sample had gotten was some scuffs to the canister. If either had managed to break or split open on the sidewalk, it would have been a real mess.
"Okay, phew, they're okay." He sighed in relief and situated them in his arms again. "Be more careful next time." He moved to keep walking, but the priestess had stepped to the side to block his way once more.
"Dude, what's your problem?" he grumbled.
"It is quite fortuitous that we've run into one another again, Dr. Geizler… or should I say almost run into one another?" She smiled, revealing dimples that might have been cute had they appeared on someone other than a Kaiju Cultist. Unlike the nuns who wandered the streets of the Bone Slums, who wore tall stylized hats but relatively simple red robes, the priestess was dressed in robes of flowing silver-green, lavishly embroidered with electric-blue thread in patterns that looked almost like the bioluminescent lines of a Kaiju. Her hat swept up in twin prongs that reminded Newt uncomfortably of Otachi's nose, and around her neck hung a pendant shaped like a clawed hand clutching a cloudy yellow crystal.
Newt grimaced and tried to step around her again, but she shifted yet again to thwart him. He didn't know this priestess' name or anything about her – the most he knew was that she wasn't Chinese or even East Asian but had come to Hong Kong from an Arabic country of some sort. But ever since the Breach had closed she'd been a royal pain in his ass. Almost any time he left the Shatterdome he ended up running into her, and having to sit through another of her long-winded invitations to join the cult. Each time he flatly refused – he might be a Kaiju enthusiast, but he wasn't stupid enough to start worshiping the things – but that didn't stop her from trying again the next time they crossed paths.
"The whispers from the deep are growing more intense, Dr. Geizler," she told him.
"For the last time, I'm not joining your little Kaiju prayer group," Newt told her. "Can I go now? I gotta feed Spike before he starts making noise and Hermann starts making noise about Spike making noise."
"The Messengers are not gone, Doctor," she insisted, her faint smile never fading and her voice never losing its calmness. "They may be taking a respite – a rather forced one, no thanks to your late friend Pentecost – but they will return. Surely you must know that."
Awhile back, the priestess' knowledge of what the Shatterdome commanders discussed on a daily basis might have unnerved Newt. Tendo, Hercules, and Hermann were frequently meeting to discuss the possibility of another Breach opening in the near future – after all, just because a door closed didn't mean it couldn't be forced open, or that another couldn't be hewn open at any given moment. And everyone, Tendo especially, feared what could happen should another Breach appear before they had Jaegers fully ready to combat whatever came out.
No one outside the Shatterdome was supposed to know this, of course. And when the priestess had first begun dropping hints about another the Kaiju possibly returning Newt had freaked out, wondering if the woman didn't have some sort of psychic or clairvoyant abilities. But when he'd approached Herc, giddy with panic, the former Ranger had simply rolled his eyes and told him that the cultists were constantly trying to plant spies among the Shatterdome personnel, and that they would weed out the mole as soon as they could. That had made sense, and now Newt just tried to ignore her whenever she dropped such hints.
"Look, lady," Newt griped, "let's get a few things straight here. One, you're creepy. Two, you're crazy. Three, did I mention you're creepy? Four, I dunno what you're going on about with the 'whispers from the deep,' but it sounds like you've been reading a little too much Lovecraft and getting it mixed up with what we know about the Kaiju. They're not messengers of any gods or Old Ones or advanced alien species… well, they're made by an advanced alien species, but they're not messengers, more like living Panzers or something. And sure, I have a healthy respect for the Kaiju, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna start saying that Trespasser died for my sins or anything crazy like that." He shifted the canister in one arm. "So pack up your Kaiju Bible and your little pamphlets, because they're not going to work on me. Okay?"
The priestess raised an eyebrow, not at all perturbed by his annoyed rant. "What you say may be true, though I have faith that you're wrong. But that does not change the fact that the whispers continue." She fingered the crystal about her neck, a sly smile on her face. "Do not try to fool me with misdirection or lies, Dr. Geizler. We know you have seen into the mind of the Kaiju. And we know you hear the whispers… and how, of late, they have grown stronger. The Messengers and their masters do not accept defeat, and even now are more active than ever."
Newt had opened his mouth to retort, but snapped it shut. "How'd you know…"
"You do not think that we did not see you invade the mind of the young Messenger?" she asked, and for the first time there was a hard edge to her voice. "The child of Otachi who gave well-earned humiliation to Hannibal, the Defiler? If you choose to enter the mind of the Messengers, Dr. Geizler, you have to be prepared to accept the consequences. You have seen the origins of the Kaiju… and surely you know that the Deep Ones, the masters of the Messengers, are planning great and terrible things for the future."
For once Newt judged it best not to give a witty retort, though he dearly wanted to. But this was all just nuts. He could buy that the cultists' agents in the Shatterdome might be overhearing the worries of the command element. He could even buy that they knew Tendo and Hermann suspected they hadn't seen the last of the Precursors or their overgrown attack dogs. But how she knew about THAT he couldn't even begin to guess – he hadn't even told Hermann about the nightmares, the gut-wrenching dreams that left him sitting bolt upright, drenched in cold sweat and gasping for breath, night after night.
…the Breach pulsing open, hissing and spitting with otherworldly energy… the glowing Throat irising open to admit a cluster of hard-shelled forms… chitters and squeaks of conversation utterly alien to his ears, yet heavy with meaning… an organic fleet sent not as an armada of war, but an expedition, a pilgrimage even…
The priestess nodded, as if satisfied by the look of startled realization on Newt's face. "You are welcome within our temple anytime, Dr. Geizler. As one who has had contact with the Messengers, you are one of the blessed ones. We understand if you do not wish to join us… but keep us in mind should the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps ever decide you are no longer useful to them." She turned to walk back to the temple, but then paused and called over her shoulder. "And tell your friend, Dr. Gottlieb, that he is welcome as well. And bring your little pet with you."
Newt shuddered and took off for the Shatterdome at a brisk clip, not even pausing to put his earbuds back in. That conversation took a turn for the weird really fast. And though she hadn't convinced him to reconsider her offer, she'd sure left him with something to think about.
Cherno Alpha's Conn Pod was a half-melted, twisted mess, ravaged by teeth and claws and acid until it was nearly unrecognizable. Yet incredibly, most of its internal systems still worked – or at least enough of them to enable a neural handshake. The technicians Bailey had managed to rope into this venture rather doubted that enough of the delicate circuitry remained intact to allow a Ranger to move the Jaeger at all, but then, it wasn't as if the Kaidonovskys were asking for full mobility.
Aleksis sighed softly as the last bit of harness was snapped into place, securing him into the cockpit. It felt strangely good to be back in the Conn Pod, armored and strapped in and ready to move in synch with Sasha and Cherno. His legs ached and trembled, unused to supporting his full weight, but he gritted his teeth and bore it. Synching up one last time would be worth it, he hoped.
Sasha reached over and clasped his arm, giving him a worried look. He simply nodded and turned his gaze straight ahead. They would only get one chance at this, and he'd be damned if he gave it up simply because he was in a little pain.
"You ready in there?" Baily called out from the LOCCENT.
"Ready," Aleksis replied. "Locked and loaded, as you might say."
"This is a bad idea," another tech muttered. "Not to mention we're going to be in a load of trouble when Choi and Hansen find out about this…"
"If you keep your big yap shut, no one'll know," another tech snarked. "All right, initializing startup protocols…"
The familiar prickle in his scalp and spine began, like a thousand ants had invaded his suit. He took a deep breath and raised his chin, closing his eyes, letting it happen. Beside him he sensed rather than saw Sasha do the same, mirroring his movements almost exactly. Even outside the neural handshake they fit together seamlessly, moving as one. Even wounded and out of commission – and even without Cherno to complete the team – the two of them remained perfectly in synch.
"Drifting systems are go," the first tech noted. "Got some weird spikes in the power supply, though… are we sure this is safe?"
"Since when was drifting ever safe?" someone muttered, then subsided before Aleksis could identify them.
"Everything's as ready as it's going to be," Baily noted, though with a great deal of hesitance in her voice. "All right… initiating neural handshake."
The Kaidonovskys had entered the drift so many times that slipping into it now was effortless, an act that was nearly second nature. The rush of emotions and memory that always accompanied the handshake washed over them, a maelstrom of images and feelings… tears coursing down his cheeks as he stood by his sobbing mother and stone-faced father at his brother's funeral… blood trickling down her upper lip as she sat in the headmaster's office, fresh from delivering a thrashing to the school's bully… the smell of fish and saltwater as he stood on the deck of his father's fishing boat… the sound of her father's favorite rock songs playing from the beat-up stereo system that he nonetheless treasured…
Other memories joined their own, memories of more recent times… Baba Yaga going down under electricity-laced fists… twinges of sensation that could have been pain as technicians soldered something in the cockpit… the tickle of water from a pressure washer brushing against thick armor… a vision of a horrifically grinning face as fire and agony invaded every sense…
Aleksis gave a laugh of mingled triumph and relief, never minding the tears – real tears, not the memory of them – that poured down his cheeks. "Cherno!"
A trickle of emotion was the reply – exhaustion, pain, but an echo of relief. You're here…
Sasha choked back a sob. "Cherno… you're still there…"
Never… never left. The reply was faint, but still there. With you… in the drift. Always with you.
"Then… then it was you," Sasha gasped. "Who pulled us back. You saved us."
Didn't want you to leave… Was it his imagination, or was the voice growing fainter? Was scared… but you're here now… everything's okay…
Aleksis reached a hand out, as if he could physically draw the presence back from wherever it was receding. "Cherno… stay with us. Please."
Can't… so tired… so low on power…
"Fight it!" Sasha cried. "We'll help you. You brought us back when we wanted to die… it's our turn to help you."
Will… will try... The feeling that flooded the drift could best be described as a smile. If I can't, though… at least I'm not alone…
Aleksis growled and threw every ounce of energy he could into the drift, trying to will Cherno's presence to stay with them. Sasha, too, focused all her mental and emotional strength into trying to catch and hold the Jaeger's… spirit? Soul? Neither of them knew precisely what Cherno possessed that gave him some semblance of life, but neither was willing to let it go, either.
Cherno's intelligence flickered briefly, like a light bulb on the verge of going out. I can't… fading fast…
"You will NOT leave us!" Sasha shouted, her cheeks glistening with tears. "You're our son, and we won't lose you!"
Can't hold on any longer… A feeling of regret pulsed through the drift. L-love you both… will miss you…
Aleksis opened his mouth to let out a desperate cry of rage and fear… only for it to suddenly morph into a scream of pain. Just as Cherno's presence seemed to flicker again, something hot and white and blindingly brilliant surged through the drift, setting every nerve in his body on fire. Beside him, Sasha screamed as well, writhing within the harness. Even Cherno seemed to feel it, and the neural handshake shook with his agony.
The burst of burning energy seemed to last for an eternity… then just as abruptly snuffed out. Then the world began to rock crazily around them.
The technicians would always wonder, after the day had ended, what would have happened had Dr. Gottlieb and Herc Hansen not entered the LOCCENT moments after they had started up the neural handshake with Cherno Alpha's team. Would events have been drastically changed? Or would their presence not have mattered, and what had happened would have happened regardless?
Bailey didn't even see them walk in, too focused on watching the readouts on the various screens. She bit her lip in worry as she studied one screen in particular. Were these energy surges in the drift normal, or a sign of trouble? She had never seen them during Mustang's testing… but maybe they were considered par for the course in the older Jaegers. Plenty of allowances had to be made for the Mark Is and IIs, if she recalled correctly. But surely energy spikes were a cause for alarm even in a Mark I, right?
"What in God's name is going on in here?"
She straightened and turned around. "Dr. Gottlieb!"
Hermann glared back, and Bailey was suddenly struck by how tired he looked. His eyes had the shadowed, slightly glazed look of someone who hadn't been sleeping well, and his hair was rumpled as if he'd been tossing and turning all night. She wondered if something was wrong with Mustang's progress that kept him up at night, or if he'd gotten bad news from home.
"Are you all right, sir?" she ventured.
"Never mind me," he grumbled. "What's going on in here? We're supposed to be doing a test run of Mustang Omega here in half an hour, and I find everyone playing at the controls…"
"It was her idea, sir!" one of the techs insisted, pointing at Bailey.
"Oh, thanks a lot!" she snapped.
"Stop bickering, all of you," grumbled Herc Hansen, stomping in as well. "And explain what's going on in here. If we have to delay that bloody Mark VI's testing and recalibration, Tendo's gonna be annoyed."
Bailey took a deep breath before replying. "Sir, Sasha Kaidonovsky approached me this morning and asked that she and Aleksis be allowed to drift one last time. Something about saying goodbye. They were pretty insistent about it, even when I told them how risky it could be."
Hermann sputtered in shock. "So you saw fit to put civilian lives at risk by letting them drift in a damaged Jaeger?"
"Since when were the Kaidonovskys civilians?" another tech demanded.
"They're out of the Jaeger program, that makes them civilians," Herc pointed out. "And we could have a lawsuit on our hands if they come out of Cherno brain-damaged or worse from a malfunctioning neural handshake. Get this thing shut down right now!"
"Sir, there've been no abnormalities so far…" the tech protested.
"Get it shut down!" Herc snapped, and reached for the power switch.
"Wait!" Bailey reached out to stop him.
She wasn't sure what happened right then. Maybe she'd bumped his arm and made him hit the wrong control. Maybe he'd moved the power switch in the wrong direction. Or maybe it hadn't been his intervention after all, and whatever was occurring inside Cherno Alpha at that moment had simply hit critical mass and set off a chain reaction. It would take a great deal of study and experimentation before anyone knew the truth.
All anyone knew was that several things started happening at once. The consoles began blinking and flickering in alarm as the energy levels in the drift abruptly skyrocketed. An alarm screeched, indicating a critical error in the neural handshake. Outside the LOCCENT, the cables hooked up to Cherno Alpha, powering his systems enough to enable the drift, fountained sparks like an impromptu fireworks show. And cutting through the beeping alarm and the crackling electricity was a far more disturbing sound – the Kaidonovskys' screaming.
"Goddamit!" Herc snapped, backing away from the console as it, too, began spitting sparks. "Someone pull the plug!"
Before anyone could act on his order, another sound drowned out the screams – a metallic groaning that sounded like something enormous beyond measure rumbling to life. Even as Herc, Hermann, and the technicians watched in shock a shudder ran through Cherno Alpha's titanic chassis, the lights in its Conn Pod and the larger, more brilliant floodlights on its chassis suddenly clicking on. The remaining hand spasmed once, then clenched, and the massive legs shifted, sending engineers and mechanics scattering in terror.
No one so much as dared to breathe as the ruined Jaeger shifted first to one side, then the other, struggling to get to its feet. Its severed arm tumbled out of its lap, smashing a supply cart as it hit the ground. Cables and wires snapped like string as it stood, wobbling on shaky legs like a newborn colt trying to stagger to its feet for the first time. One turbine struck a nearby catwalk, snapping it and sending it tilting at a crazy angle – and in the midst of the chaos Bailey briefly had the thought that it was a miracle no one had been standing there at that moment.
"The hell," Herc murmured, going pale beneath his beard.
"It's not supposed to be doing that!" a tech insisted. "The circuitry between the piloting systems and the motor systems was wrecked! There's no way they should be controlling it!"
"Check the diagnostic readout!" Hermann ordered. "There's got to be some kind of explanation! The Kaidonovskys must have rerouted something!"
"They're good, but not THAT good," said Herc, but brought up the diagnostic anyhow. "Someone probably tried to fix Cherno behind our backs… what the bloody hell…"
Under normal circumstances the diagnostic readout would have displayed damages and malfunctions suffered during the course of a battle, though occasionally it could be used to bring up the Jaeger's code so a programmer could work out any bugs in the system. This was neither a damage readout nor code, however. Text was rapidly spilling onto the readout, in a Cyrillic text Bailey couldn't make out. That didn't make any sense – all Jaegers were programmed in English, even if they came from other countries…
"My god." That was Hermann... and he no longer looked annoyed at the delay of Mustang's testing. He looked stunned, almost terrified… but awed as well.
"What's it say?" demanded Herc. "Someone translate, I can't read Russian!"
"I can't see," Hermann replied softly.
"It's right there, how can you not see it?" Herc snapped.
"That is precisely what it says," Hermann explained. "'I can't see.' Over and over. But it's interspersed with other words… 'help'… 'mother' and 'father'… 'scared'…"
The Jaeger flailed, almost falling over, but managed to regain its footing before a disastrous tumble could occur. It's remaining arm struck the broken catwalk again, sending a section of it hurtling toward the ground. A high-pitched whine came from its engines, and for a moment Bailey thought it sounded almost like a crying child…
"Oh my god," she gasped as the enormity of what was happening hit her all at once. "It's…"
"Sentient," Hermann finished for her. "Somehow… impossibly… Cherno Alpha is alive."