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"Wroooar!!"
The six-limbed MUTO roared and released an electromagnetic pulse simultaneously, destroying every electrical fixture in the facility. Steel scaffolding shuddered in the distance. One roar from a freshly awakened Titan, and the entire space had already taken massive damage.
Guards and soldiers alike — before that thing, every last one of them was the size of an ant.
"NO!"
One soldier broke. Fear crawled up his spine and flooded his brain, and his hands moved before his mind could stop them — rifle up, finger on the trigger. Squad leader Luo Ao saw it happen and lunged to intervene.
He was a step too late.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Muzzle flash strobed in the dark. A burst of rounds climbed from the ground toward a creature a hundred meters tall.
Weapons capable of dropping any animal on Earth. Against a Titan, they were less than toys. The bullets sparked against the MUTO's hide and left nothing behind , not a scratch, not a welt. Nothing.
But the noise got its attention.
It turned its head, just slightly. Crimson eyes found the soldier who had fired. Reflected in those eyes was the man's own terror, staring back at him.
Plop. Plop.
Drops of saliva fell from the MUTO's open maw and hit the concrete floor. Each drop was bigger than a person. Where they landed, steaming puddles spread outward, and the edges of those puddles ate into the ground.
There is a fear that lives in the oldest part of the human brain. It wakes up when something enormous looks at you.
This MUTO didn't have to do anything. Its presence alone was enough.
"Control it!" Luo Ao shouted toward the soldiers stationed near the sonic device.
They had come prepared. The control equipment was shielded against electromagnetic pulses , the higher-ups had thought of that much.
"Copy!"
The soldier adjusted the frequency. Sound waves pulsed outward.
The MUTO froze mid-motion, head already dipping toward them. Its gaze shifted, fixing on the direction of the device. Something behind those eyes flickered with confusion.
Luo Ao exhaled slowly. "It actually works."
Good. They weren't on a suicide run after all.
"They brought an ORCA."
"Doesn't matter."
In the observation room, the man gave his technician a look. The technician understood immediately and bumped their own device up a setting.
Did they really think he'd let someone just walk off with a Titan he'd spent this long cultivating?
"Wroooar!!"
The MUTO's eyes went a deeper, angrier red. Its slender arms swung wide through the dim underground air.
BOOM!
THUD!
Steel fencing, steel piping, every rigid structure in reach , the MUTO's limbs tore through all of it. Debris and dust exploded in every direction. The beast was done standing still.
Their technology couldn't fully control a Titan. But it could tell one who its enemies were.
"Wroooar!!"
The MUTO swept its limbs through the remaining man-made structures, demolishing everything around it. Then it turned toward the Monarch squad and started moving. The team was already pulling back, funneling into the narrow corridor, and the MUTO followed, crashing into the passage behind them.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Its limbs punched through steel rebar and concrete, tearing the walls apart, carving a deep channel as it went. Like a machine boring a tunnel, it drove steadily upward toward the surface.
"Good."
"Phase one is right on schedule." The man in the observation room allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch.
Then a voice came from directly behind him, and the expression vanished.
"Why do you need to control it?"
"Trying to rule the world?"
He spun around. A tall, lean man in a floral shirt stood watching him.
"Who are you!?" The long-haired man yanked the sidearm from his hip and leveled it at the stranger.
The technicians scrambled from their stations. Amid the tremors rolling through the floor, pistols came out, every barrel aimed at the intruder's head.
"Forget it." Xia Shu glanced around the room. "Explaining it to you right now would be a waste of breath."
"Some things you only understand after living through them."
He started walking toward the ORCA device.
His fist tightened.
They pulled their triggers.
BANG BANG BANG.
Bullets came from every direction. At a moment like this, they had no patience for some random person who had wandered in where he didn't belong.
Then something happened that none of them could explain.
Every bullet they fired bent off course. Some invisible force deflected the rounds mid-flight, and they punched into the observation room's glass instead, leaving a constellation of holes across the pane.
Xia Shu was already standing in front of the ORCA device. He drew back his fist and drove it into the machine. One punch. The device crumpled into scrap with a sharp crack.
They hadn't even processed that when it hit them.
An invisible force swept through the room like a gust of wind and slammed every one of them into the back wall. Consciousness left them all at once , mouths slack, eyes shut.
Xia Shu glanced at the massive pit the MUTO had carved through the floor. That was the way up.
"I'll have a proper conversation with you all after I deal with the Kaiju."
He kicked through the observation room's glass wall, taking a section of instrument panels with it, and sprinted out into the open, chasing the MUTO toward the surface.
The unconscious bodies lifted off the floor behind him, carried by telekinetic force, and floated out through a separate passage.
...
"God — it's right behind us!"
"GO!"
"MOVE!"
The Monarch team felt the tunnel shaking around them and heard the roar getting closer. They ran.
Luo Ao was at the front. The passage opened into an underground parking garage , pitch black, every light dead. Their tactical flashlights cut thin beams through the dark as they sprinted across the lot at full speed.
"Where the hell is our backup!?"
He snarled into the comms.
They were the advance team. Reinforcements should have mobilized the moment the MUTO's presence was confirmed. So where were they?
"RUN!"
The ground heaved. He felt it through his boots before he heard it , the Titan was coming through.
BOOM!
Every load-bearing column in the parking garage exploded. A massive shape tore up through the pit it had carved and burst onto the surface, blowing the entire structure apart. The building above lurched and toppled sideways.
"NO!"
The ceiling came down. Chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, cascading debris , all of it dropping straight toward them. The team screamed and threw their arms over their heads.
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.
Rubble. Dust. Silence.
When the noise stopped, the pain they were bracing for never came.
They opened their eyes.
They were alive. Intact. Standing in a field of ruins, open night sky above them. The city stretched out around them , crumbling walls, buildings tilted at wrong angles, green moss spreading across everything that had been broken years ago. And not far away, the MUTO stood against the dark sky, a hundred meters of it, while the ruined city seemed to lean toward it like something bowing.
"Wroooar!!"
The MUTO roared at the night.
"What just happened?" Luo Ao looked at his own hands, then at his team. Every one of them uninjured. His mind couldn't make sense of it.
Then he saw him.
A man in a floral shirt, standing on a chunk of rubble a short distance away. He was looking up at the Titan. The bracelet on his right wrist was glowing.
➤ Next: Battle Between Behemoths
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