THREE: Weight of the World
(START: 19 hours 15 minutes 43 seconds)
"Dad!" In his usual fashion, Mark snapped to from where he stood hunched over a case, knocking a bottle of water off the desk.
"Christ. What is it, Madison?" Madison tapped her foot, arms at her sides, not really impressed by the long-suffering frown shot in her direction.
"Are you okay?" She'd been standing outside his office for a good minute calling him by his paternal name, then his actual name. All while he stared at nothing, twitching like Dr. Brundle and probably remembering things he shouldn't.
"You scaring the Micky Jesus out of me aside, yes," he dropped his head into his hands, shoulders heaving with a great sigh.
Filing that phrase away from later, she said, "I didn't sneak up on you." Joining him at the desk, she snatched the bottle from the floor. "I've been trying to get your attention for the last minute."
"Is that right?"
"Yes. You zoned out." Madison set the bottle back on the table and rocked against him. Not one to disappoint, Mark returned the motion in kind.
"Sorry about that. Didn't mean to worry you," he said.
"That's a first."
"I won't dignify that with a response." Madison barely allowed her shoulders to rise before focusing on the bright screen of the encased laptop. "What is this?" She asked.
"The beta program for COSMOS," The heel of his hand rubbed his left eye. The other remained busy on the touchscreen.
"It just looks like the ORCA," she said.
"It's not, I promise." Mark moved over, allowing his daughter a little more space. Madison stepped into his space, glimpsing at the sound waves that scroll across the screen between a stock image of Ilene and Ling Chen's badge IDs. Right below theirs was the blurry x-ray of Dianoia and its sound waves. "COSMOS can read and send sound waves. Most animals communicate through vocalization. For us, it's speech, language. Baleen whales use songs. Dolphins use vocalization, too—but it's not as complex as a whale song. Orcas can imitate human speech across multiple languages."
"So, you're going to use music to communicate with the titans?"
"In so many words, yes?" The bewilderment on her father's face was worrying. Sighing, he said, "Ilene… her grandmother told her that some people in her family could create these kinds of songs that brought them closer to nature. She always thought it was a fairy tale—but during Boston, she said she heard her sister's voice."
"In her head?" Madison was asking more than clarifying.
"I dunno, she wasn't too clear on that," Mark huffed. "She heard her sister's voice, and… she knew what to do. What to say."
"They called Mothra?"
"Yeah, that's the gist of it," he said. "She wanted me to record her when she and Ling tried it again." He nodded to the touchscreen as Madison looked away from him. There were certainly audio cues on the screen now. That much she could tell.
"So, how are you gonna help those guys down in the caves?"
"I dunno if it'll help those guys in the caves, but, when I got the call from Chen, it'd only been a few hours since the test," He said. "Which means, it heard Ilene, or it heard the playback."
"And you think playing this again -"
"A different audio cue, but mainly the same recording."
"-will calm it down instead of provoking it?" Madison finished, eyebrows raised.
Reaching past her, he closed the case surrounding the laptop. "We're going into the caves with COSMOS, and hopefully-" He locked the carry case, hefting it off the table. "-Hopefully, the recording from Ilene and her sister will calm the titan down. At least long enough for us to get everyone evacuated, and find the others."
Madison processed the information while her father headed out of the office, not concerned with her following. He fell into step with Ilene as Madison's dread caught up with her brain. "Wait, Dad!"
Madison was out of the office and down the stairs. Stumbling into a run, she weaved through passing scientists unprepared for a slip of a kid zooming past them.
"Dad!"
"What?"
Madison maneuvered herself around the busybodies of the G-team until she was practically under the arm of her father. Like second nature, Mark exchanged the COSMOS from his left to his right hand, raising his arm before Madison jumped between him and Ilene.
Ilene peeled away from him, a sympathetic smile crossing her lips as she moved ahead with the others.
Madison ducked under his arm, fixing him a sour look. It reminded him of that one Emma gave him whenever she peeled him off the floor from drinking his woes. "This is a not great, really terrible idea," she said. "Maybe one of your worst."
"That's debatable."
Two hours ago, Madison settled into the temporary quarters of their home while Dad worked at the outpost. Half an hour after attempting to hail Andrew and Ling in Yunnan, she knew she wasn't having that talk with her father. Madison tried to go to sleep. Bitterness churned in her gut, thinking she was being ignored by her family.
In the middle of a good cry, a tremor that sent her underneath the threshold of her door rocked the woodsy little box of a house. She tucked Carl under her arm and cried her regrets. Madison was certain she wouldn't have moved if she hadn't heard her father calling for her from outside.
She hadn't left his side since. (Carl had other things to do, it seemed, and promptly vanished someplace less rickety.) The evacuation was an hour into the process, the emergency sirens kept everyone on edge.
"I've had some bad ideas, but none of them top proposing to Marissa Clark my freshman year of university," Mark recounted, earning another glare from her daughter. "It's true! I was over the moon for her, but she only had eyes for this guy who worked for the paper. Hobson or something. We didn't speak until after graduation. It was an awkward four years, lemmie tell ya."
"Dad, I don't care about that." Madison stepped in front of him. He stopped while the rest of the team walked around them without breaking a beat. "I'm talking about you going down there. You don't have to do that, not to use the COSMOS." The look on her father's face was neither amused nor annoyed. Resigned maybe, but if her father was good at anything, it was hiding his feelings until he didn't want to. Her mother was an open book, unafraid of letting others know what she thought of them. Madison appreciated that about Emma, missed it even.
His gaze leveled behind her. She turned to regard the rest of the G-team standing in the center of the Monarch emblem with Dr. Chen. Ilene watched them with all the authoritative grace of a hall monitor. "How would you know, Maddie? You only just found out about it," he said.
"I mean, you're using sound waves or something, right? Just use it like mom used the speakers in Montana," Madison insisted. "Please, don't go down there."
"It's not that simple."
"Why isn't it?"
"Because–I've only just started working on this. It's short range, so I need to be pretty close to the titan to use this."
"That's crazy," Madison snapped. Mark didn't disagree with her there, but limitations were limitations.
"The COSMOS is just a precaution, Maddie," Mark said. "If we can use it to calm it down, then we won't need to use the kill switch in the cave. It'll buy us time if anything goes wrong." That stopped her. They were going to kill the titan? "What about the rest of the team? Jenkins and the others?"
"Jerkins," Mark shook his head. "It's been hours since we heard from them. We can't pick up their vitals, and all their body cams are down. We have to assume the worst."
Madison paled. "And the titan? You don't have to kill it. Mom got Jinshin-Mushi under control with the ORCA."
"That's not our first option," Mark repeated and pinched the bridge of his nose. Madison felt her heart constrict in equal resignation. "It's not doing anything wrong," she said. Her parents didn't exactly see eye-to-eye on the titans. She watched their disagreements go from minor to explosive and thought her father was being unreasonable. After seeing firsthand her mother's plan of action, and how closely it melded with Alan Jonah's philosophy, the Monarch teams that set the other titans free, it wasn't difficult to understand her father's mistrust of humanity and the titans.
Still, she thought the creatures deserved a chance now that people like Jonah were out of the picture. Monarch was actively working to make things different like Serizawa wanted. Maybe Dianoia was an exception to the rule, but she didn't feel comfortable advocating for its death. "It's not exactly doing anything right either, Maddie," He leveled. "Our first option isn't to kill it. I can promise you that. But, in case you forgot, Emma didn't stop that thing. That was Godzilla."
"But Mom helped," Madison reminded, looking him square in the eye.
Not interested in getting into a fight, he changed tactics. "Look, Dianoia is growing some kind of nest, a biomass–"
"Biomass?"
"Yes, that red stuff you saw in the pictures. It's like a mold. We can't contain it, and it's spreading underground. Moving through the cave system. If we can't get it to calm down, we'll have to kill it," Mark clarified. "Madison, these animals are old, dangerous. Most of 'em can't coexist with the world as it is now. There's a good chance that this thing is an invasive species. It could do some real damage if we don't stop it."
"And there's no other way?"
"How do you suggest we deal with it?" He asked.
"Take it to Skull Island," Madison said. "Use the COSMOS to tell it we won't hurt it."
"We haven't napped all its mass yet. Trying to remove it from the area is a no-go," Mark countered. "Skull Island isn't an option. It's also not a landfill for monsters, it's an ecosystem. Introducing a foreign species could cause issues."
Madison's eyes shifted quickly to the right. "What does Dr. Chen think?" She used to side with her mother's take on the titans, typically in discussions with Dr. Graham. Maybe she disagreed?
Mark wasn't sure what she was getting at. "Ilene thinks the same as I do. Our priority is making sure it can't hurt anyone else," he said. When Madison kept staring at him, he shrugged. "What?"
"If you agree so much, why don't you two just get married?" she grumped, raising an eyebrow.
Confusion quickly melted into irritation. Typically, when Madison couldn't win an argument, she went for the low blows. In the year since their reunion, he'd seen her, and Andrew, antagonize each other in ways that used to land them in hot water with him and Emma. Now? He only intervened when it got physical. He didn't feel he had the right otherwise. Most days, he was smart enough not to take the bait, even when they could say the nastiest things to him.
(He was an adult now, not a twentysomething college kid looking for a fight.)
And, yet, today, the bait rankled him. Enough to stop breathing (just for a second), enough to want to dismiss the knowing, if not pity, behind why Madison said those silly words.
Madison looked away for a fraction of a second, then steadied her gaze on his again.
"Erm, Dr. Russell?" Dr. Bloom's voice echoed plaintively in the open space.
"In a minute," was his dismissive reply. "Look, what is this really about?"
"What do you mean?" Madison puzzled.
"I already told you, killing the titan isn't our first option. It's a last resort. The COSMOS is a stalling tactic for the evacuation. So. What. Is. This. About?"
Madison opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.
"Ilene's married."
"I know that." Sort've. Ilene spoke so little of her personal life outside of the occasional stories about her family's archeological work. It wasn't hard for Madison to make assumptions about the woman's marital status. Kids didn't equal marriage, nevermind husband.
"I'm unhappily widowed with a cat who won't stop bothering me, and two kids who hate my guts." At her protest, Mark waved her off.
Madison ran to catch up with him, grabbing the back of her hoodie as it rolled down her shoulders.
"I wasn't-!"
"That's not the point." Mark waited until she was at his side to continue. "Not every woman I come into contact with is my sweetheart." He raised the arm holding the COSMOS, gesturing awkwardly to the wedding band still on his ring finger. "I'm still a little hung up on your mom." He stopped again. Madison almost ran into him, an indignant grunt following. "Did you grill your mother like this about her guy friends?"
"Mom—she never stayed with anyone long enough." Madison never committed to remembering their names, hoping against hope her folks would sort their issues out.
"Yeah? Well, I was too drunk to date, never mind sleep with anyone." Madison's indignant snort earned her an embarrassed, "I mean—commit to!" Goddamnit, so much for not falling for the bait.
"So? She never said it, but she cried about you a lot." At her father's frown, she continued. "If you were as grown up as you thought, you wouldn't have pushed her away."
"It wasn't that simple, Madison. It never was." Her father's expression was annoyingly sympathetic. She knew what he was saying, but didn't care. "We both made some bad choices. You and your brother would've been worse off if we stayed together. I hope you're old enough to understand that at least." Madison kept her eyes forward, choosing silence over a retort.
Dr. Chen and the G-team pretended not to have heard their argument. She offered Madison a temperate smile. "We should be back up soon. Don't worry, Madison," she said, motioning toward the military men armed with flamethrowers flanking the other team members. "These guys won't let anything happen to us, and I'll look after your old man."
"Why isn't Godzilla responding?" Madison tried again, moving toward the emblem. Mark stopped her just short of stepping onto the platform, a firm hand on her shoulder, and a shake of his head. "We couldn't say. But, Godzilla is not a pet," Dr. Chen said, adjusting the collar of her hazmat suit. "He doesn't come when we beckon. Nor should he."
"Besides, he ignores most of our communication attempts, anyway," Mark muttered.
"With respect, Dr. Russell, we humans dropped a bomb on him," Dr. Bloom said.
"That was the military."
"That he isn't here is a good thing," Ilene stepped in. "It means we can deal with this." Famous last words, Madison thought as Dr. Chen turned to her father for support, which, of course, he reciprocated. Any situation where Dad didn't have to deal with Godzilla stomping around a Monarch facility was a good day for him. Still, she remained unconvinced.
"As soon as there's trouble?" she asked.
"We'll get out," Mark said, tapping the imaginary watch on his wrist.
"Rick's station will monitor us. You can talk to us from there," Dr. Chen added. Madison pretended not to see her father counting backward as the the lights of the hall dimmed and the emergency lights flickered. The platform the G-team stood on shuddered, followed by the loud hiss of hydraulics and moving metal beneath them.
Madison stepped away from the platform and began its steady descent into the station below. Everyone preoccupied themselves with fastening the helmets of their hazmat suits. Madison kept watching, even as the blast doors slid shut. Her father looked up at her just moments before the doors closed and raised the walkie-talkie he carried to his mouth. "I'll see you topside, chief," His voice was right next to her. She gave him an uneasy smile.
Stepping away from the doors, Madison hurried to the monitoring station where Rick was watching the feed from the suits. Dr. Coleman stood next to the control station, keeping idle track of the titan's vitals, thumb between his teeth in uneasy concentration. "Did I miss anything?" She asked.
Dr. Stanton seemed to eye her with all the suspicion of a cat. "Uh, no. What are you doing in here?"
Madison waved him off. "Dr. Chen said I could be here," she said. There was a disagreeable grunt from Dr. Stanton, mumbling out of earshot. Dr. Coleman offered her a smile, but Madison kept her attention focused on the feed with her father's initials on it.
During the first seven months at Outpost 17 with her father, Madison wasn't allowed down into the chamber where Dianoia slept between stone, ice, and lime. At first, Madison assumed it was Dad being his usual overprotective self. But it didn't take long to realize, these days, he preferred to work alone and apart from even his colleagues.
Not worrying about where she'd be at all times was just a bonus. One that meant keeping her out of the titan enclosure. He thought separating her from Monarch's study of the titans was necessary to counter the worst aspects of her mother's radicalization.
She went to school, tried to make friends, and visited the library. She even went to mandated therapy with Dad when they could (to the chagrin of Dr. Shaw, their therapist). The bulk of her experience with her father as the head of Monarch was the opposite of her experience with Mom as a mere researcher. It chafed.
She got angry whenever Andrew sent an e-mail, and it contained video and photograms of the new Mothra larva. Her father seemed to trust Andrew considerably more than her. Enough to allow him to leave the States with Ling Chen, whose family all but became their legal guardians since Emma's death (at Dad's request). She wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that Mom explicitly kept Andrew in the dark about her plans. He remained close to Dad, even when it seemed he wanted nothing to do with any of them, or was took drunk to care.
That didn't seem fair to her. She was being punished for being Mom's favorite, her most trusted ally.
In her free time, Madison busied herself with playing with Carl. The orange tabby disappeared for days even when locked in the house, usually coming back with odd trinkets he presented to them like trophies. If she wasn't playing with Carl, she was reading her father's observations of Dianoia's chrysalis.
Listening to the recordings of the monster's sleepy bellows was surreal. Sometimes she could hear her father breathing along with it, maybe someone in the background. The titan's acoustics were pretty overwhelming. It was an odd, maybe delicate kind've ambient music. X-rays didn't offer much in the way of illustration, just blurry impressions of what might be bones.
That water remained circulating in its chrysalis meant it was probably aquatic. From what they could gather, the titan's size spanned most of the outpost. Ouray would be an unfortunate victim of its potential awakening. Her father remarked several times in his notes that the titan was probably better off left alone since it never responded to Ghidorah's or Godzilla's alpha call.
"Not necessarily another Alpha, like Kong," He wrote. "The mythologists call them kings. But no one animal can govern or control another. That's not balance or co-existence. That's a dictatorship." He crossed the last bit out to the point she could only just make it out.
Dad thought the amount of activity going on in the outpost would almost certainly wake it up and put everyone in danger. He wanted to downsize the amount of research going on, but the Chens thought it was necessary to keep an eye on it, the ice was melting, and fissures were appearing in foundations around the enclosure. Dad only seemed to be present to minimize the damage he knew would happen.
The last they'd seen Godzilla was their departure from Skull Island. Scarred and bruised from his fight with Kong and the Skullcrawlers, Godzilla followed their ship most of the way back to Yunnan and then disappeared. Dad watched him the whole time, bleary-eyed and avoidant of the lower decks. She assumed it was because he didn't trust Godzilla, and the enclosure of the lower decks triggered his claustrophobia. Now she wasn't sure.
Madison wondered where Godzilla was now, what he was doing, and why he was ignoring them. Watching her father study the cave, now covered in blood-red vines weaving around the grated floor, walls, and scaffolding built around the dormant titan, Madison wanted nothing more than to be as far away from the outpost and the titan as possible.
(END: 19 hours 57 minutes 30 seconds)