I turn my focus away from Scylla’s body. I free the monster’s mind, allowing it to experience its own confusing death. I will my body to return to me. I try to feel my own lungs breathing. My fingers. My body.
A tingling sensation moves through me, and I think I’ve returned, but everything is wrong. I can’t breathe. Everything feels tight. I’m dying.
I’m stuck in Scylla’s body!
“How does it feel, Hudson?” I barely hear the voice, but I recognize it. Gordon. Is he speaking to me through Scylla’s mind?
Suddenly, I snap back to full consciousness, inside my own body, which is wrapped in a tight embrace. Gordon is squeezing the life out of me.
My thoughts turn to Hawkins and Lilly for a moment.
If Gordon is here, are they...?
Gordon applies more pressure. My back isn’t far from snapping. I know, from recent experience.
I look for help. For Endo.
He’s lying on the roof, unconscious. Maybe dead.
“You killed my child,” he says.
“Nem-es-sis,” I manage to say.
He understands the argument I’m attempting to make. He shakes his head. “You, and that bitch, Maigo. You’re guiding her now.”
My vertebrae pop like I’m visiting an extreme chiropractor. If he stopped now, I might just feel the dull ache of a spinal alignment. He doesn’t stop. He’s going to squeeze until I burst; a ketchup packet in the hands of a ’roid-raging wrestler.
And then, with a suddenness that makes me wonder if my soul has fled my mortal form, I’m free. The soul theory disappears when I hit the roof and my body screams at me. My first thought is that I’m getting sick of hospitals. My second is, but I do like pudding. My third is more timely.
What the hell just happened?
From my sideways view on the roof, I watch Gordon stumble to the roof’s edge. He’s clutching his head, staggering like his legs have gone weak. “What have you done?”
I can’t see what he’s looking at, but I know the direction he’s looking, and I know exactly what I did. I can still taste Typhon’s blood in my mouth, even though it was never actually in my mouth.
I know a good action hero would say something antagonistic right now. And part of me really wants to pour salt on his fresh wound. But screw that. Not dying sounds better. While Gordon lets out a horrible sounding wail, I drag myself across the roof. I’m trying to get up, but I haven’t regained full control of my body yet. I worry that he already broke my back, but I can move all my limbs, I’m just not very coordinated yet.
I’ve made it only ten feet when Gordon turns around to face me. Without saying a word, he crosses the distance between us with three long strides. I try to squirm away, but I don’t make it far. He grips the armor over my back and lifts me off the ground. I feel like a scrawny kid in the hands of a bully. He drags me to the side of the roof, facing the Capitol ruins. He lifts me up, but doesn’t throw me over the side, which would kill me right quick.
He wants me to watch.
Karkinos and Nemesis are squaring off, eyes locked on each other, despite the continuing barrage from the Air Force. Missiles pepper both Kaiju, but they barely react to the explosions. The real threat is each other. But Nemesis is taking a beating. Gouts of her thick, protective skin are being knocked away by the modern barrage. Karkinos fares much better as the behemoth’s body is mostly covered by thick plates of armor. It’s probably not even feeling the missiles.
“In the end,” Gordon says, “I knew there could only be one.”
“How Highlander of you,” I quip.
Gordon shakes the funny out of me, sobering me up.
“Watch,” he says. “The ancient Greeks got it right. The children of the gods always usurp their parents.”
A missile streaks in, missing Karkinos and carrying on toward Nemesis. It strikes the side of her head and detonates, making her flinch away, either from the pain or the loud noise right next to her ear.
Karkinos takes advantage of the brief distraction and charges. Nemesis reels back, but it’s too late. Karkinos swings her massive arms again and again, pounding Nemesis like a boxer on the ropes. Nemesis backs away, but the constant stream of missiles stumbles her up.
Still the faster of the two, Nemesis spins and swings her tail out. The trident-tipped tail is capable of sweeping through entire buildings, but Karkinos’s armored legs take the blow without any damage. Nemesis turns around just in time to face the rushing Karkinos, but there is little she can do about the charging behemoth.
Karkinos reaches up with both of its giant pincer-like claws and catches Nemesis’s arms.
Nemesis, the taller of the two, bites down on the back of Karkinos’s neck, but the armor plating fends off what could have been a killer strike. While Nemesis tries to peel the armor away, those giant pincers compress her forearms until the pain becomes unbearable. Nemesis lets out a high pitched roar, turning her head to the sky. She pulls back, struggling to free herself from Karkinos’s grasp before her arms are severed.