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Serizawa refrained from replying. There were too many unsanctioned ears present and he had no desire to start a panic. Instead he headed toward the sunlight, joining Kenji in a wide circle of warm golden light. Tilting his head back, he peered upward.

High above his head, a ragged hole in the ceiling opened up onto the outside world — almost as though something had burst outward from the depth of the cavern, leaving the ruptured sac behind. He exchanged more apprehensive looks with Graham. This was far more than they had anticipated.

Hours later, as their chopper ferried them away from the site, Serizawa got a birds-eye view of the giant sinkhole that had broken through the floor of the jungle. Nearly sixty meters in diameter, the hole was even bigger than it had looked from below. But that wasn’t all that alarmed him. Beyond the gaping pit, a massive drag mark stretched across the hilly rain forest, leaving a trail of crushed and uprooted trees and foliage. Acres across, the trail gouged a disturbingly wide path toward the north end of the island — and the open Pacific beyond.

Serizawa could only wonder what had emerged from the pit.

And where it was heading now.

THREE

1999

The alarm clock jolted Ford Brody from sleep. One minute he’d been dreaming about riding a dragon through outer space, the next he found himself back in his bedroom in suburban Japan. Dawn streamed through the window curtains. Only nine years old, the boy smacked the snooze button on the clock and buried his face back into his pillow. Maybe he could get in a few more moments of sleep before his mom dragged him out of bed.

Then he remembered what day it was.

His eyes lit up and a mischievous smile spread across his face. He slid out of bed and tiptoed across the floor, which was littered with toy soldiers, tanks, and dinosaurs. Just last night, right before going to bed, he’d staged an epic battle between the miniature army-men and a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex. As usual, the dinosaur had won…

The glow of a heat lamp caught Ford’s eyes. Despite his big plans for the morning, he detoured over to his terrarium to check on the butterfly cocoon dangling from a branch inside the glass case. To his slight disappointment, the cocoon had not hatched overnight. He impatiently tapped on the glass, trying to provoke a response, but the pupa inside the cocoon refused to cooperate.

Oh well, Ford thought, shrugging. Maybe tomorrow.

In the meantime, he had other business to attend to. There was a reason he had set the alarm to wake him up an hour early. He had a lot to accomplish before his dad woke up.

But as he snuck out into the hall, still in his pajamas, he was dismayed to hear Joe Brody’s voice coming from his office at the end of the corridor. Creeping closer, Ford saw his dad pacing back and forth across the work-filled office, talking urgently into the phone:

“—I’m asking — Takashi—Takashi—I’m asking for the meeting because I don’t know what’s going on. If I could explain it, I’d write a memo.”

Shaking his head, Joe ran a hand through his unruly reddish-brown hair. Early morning stubble dotted his anxious face. Glasses perched on his nose. He threw an exasperated look at Ford’s mom, Sandra, who hovered in the doorway to the office, listening intently to her husband’s side of the conversation. Her short black hair needed combing, and she had a robe on over her nightgown. Ford didn’t understand what the problem was, but he figured it had something to with his parents’ work at the nuclear power plant. The family had relocated from San Francisco a few years ago so that they could both get good jobs at the plant.

“Because Hayato said it had to come from you,” Joe said impatiently.

His mom heard Ford shuffling behind her. She turned away from the office to spot him in the hallway. He crept up beside her, distraught over this unexpected turn of events.

“He’s awake?” he whispered.

Her face transformed in an instant, going from concerned professional to sympathetic mom right away. She knelt down to look Ford in the eye. She mussed his light brown hair.

“I know!” she whispered back. “He got up early.”

Ford’s heart sank. Of all mornings for there to be a problem at the plant. “What’re we gonna do?”

“Get dressed,” she instructed him, flashing a conspiratorial smile. “I’ll figure it out.”

* * *

Sandra watched her son scamper back to his room before turning her attention back to more grown-up affairs. Joe barely looked up as she re-entered the office, which was neatly organized despite all the graphs and reports piled about. Printouts of an unidentified waveform pattern were spread out atop his desk, alongside a stack of zip disks.

“… my data starts two weeks ago,” he explained into the phone. “I’ve got fourteen days of anomalous signal; pulsing between seventy five and a hundred kilohertz, then suddenly today it’s like the same thing but an echo. I’ve ruled out the turbines, internal leakage, we’ve checked every local RF, TV and microwave transponder. I’m still sitting here with two hundred hours of graph I can’t explain.” He paused, listening to someone at the other end of the line. “No—No—the fact that it’s stopped is not reassuring. That’s not good, that’s not the message here.”

He belatedly noticed Sandra waiting by the doorway. He placed a hand over the phone’s receiver. “What’s going on?”

“Your birthday?” she reminded him. “Someone is preparing your ‘surprise’ party…”

Understanding dawned on his face, but she could tell this was the last thing on his mind right now. Flustered, he nodded at her, acknowledging that he’d gotten the message, but making no effort to get off the phone. He held up his hand, signaling that he needed a few more minutes.

Sandra frowned, giving him a gently chiding look, but let him get back to his call. Lord knew she understood how troubling this new data was. She shared her husband’s worries.

“… But that’s — hang on—that’s exactly my point,” he insisted. “The moment these pulses stopped is when we started having the tremors.” He irritably shuffled a stack of zip disks from his desk. “With all due respect, Takashi, and honor. Respect and honor. With all of that, okay? I’m an engineer and I don’t like coincidences and I don’t like unexplained frequency patterning near a plant that’s my responsibility. I need a meeting. Make it happen.”

He was still arguing with Takashi as she left to check on Ford, who had already gotten into his school uniform. They waited until Joe disappeared into the master bedroom to change for work, then hurriedly hung a string of cardboard letters over the archway of the office door. The handmade sign read: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!”

Grinning, she and Ford admired their work. They high-fived each other. Ford beamed in anticipation of his dad’s reaction.

But when Joe emerged from the bedroom, freshly shaven and wearing a suit and tie, he walked right by the banner without even noticing. His phone was glued to his ear and he spoke rapidly in Japanese on his way out the front door. “Come on,” he called out to Sandra and Ford, switching back to English. “We gotta go!”

Crushed, Ford looked up at Sandra. “It rocks,” she assured him. “He’ll see it when he gets home, I promise.”

Her comforting words appeared to do the trick. The absolute trust on his face tugged at her heart. Nodding, he grabbed his backpack and dashed out the door after his father. Sandra followed them, vowing to herself that, freaky signals or no freaky signals, she would see to it that her son was not disappointed.