Chapter Text
Newt is never tired. Okay, wait, that's definitely a lie, he's like always tired. He hasn't slept in four days, maybe? It's all blurred together. Months, maybe, really, once the breach had closed and the parties stopped, and every other living soul had left the Shatterdome (as if this meant they were safe). There's no one here to tell him to stop anymore. The thing is, Newt knows. He knows. No matter what the world wants to believe, what the governments want to believe, he knows that this is not over yet. Somewhere in the kaiju or in his brain is the answer to what's coming next. When they're coming back.
Herc and some of the others - Tendo, Hermann even, had initially agreed that remaining to monitor the breach was the intelligent idea. They'd all pushed their reassignment orders and job offers and lecture tours back weeks and weeks, waiting for a blip on the radar, a rumble from the Breach to tell them they had only postponed the inevitable. Months passed. Nothing ever came. Herc had gone first, to oversee some kind of training program restructuring or something else they told sad old sacks of shit like him to do. Tendo had lingered, but left in a storm of shaking heads and No - Newts and I'm - not - indulging - you - anymore - Newts and the squeak of shoes and quiet shutting of doors. Newt had tried not to be disappointed, or even really surprised.
Hermann had stayed the longest. Just as tired as Newt, just as determined...He'd lost heart, in the end. Said that remote monitoring would be fine, that if nothing had happened by now it wouldn't while he was staring at screens and peering into microscopes. He'd told Newt he had a wife to return home to, and a baby on the way. Newt guessed he couldn't begrudge the finicky bastard for ditching him in his hour of need. He'd pulled through on one crazy Geiszler notion with that drift, and Newt couldn't ask more of the guy than that. Anyway, Hermann had told him to keep in touch, sort of, in a weird way, so Newt had been keeping him updated for a month or two. It had been going well - he never had much to report, but Hermann had been almost...encouraging. For the stiff old bastard, anyway. Hermann's responses had gotten shorter and shorter, though, before they stopped. The last one he'd gotten had been...over three weeks ago, now. It had just said "Go home.". Newt hadn't really bothered to respond. Or open his email again. Why should he? Fuck them. He didn't have anyone left to talk to.
He thought about giving up. Pretty often, really. His samples were deteriorating. The power had been shut off over a week ago, and the generator he'd salvaged was mediocre at best. The Shatterdome was completely empty. He wasn't even supposed to be here. He'd told Hermann he'd rented warehouse space in the city, and was working long nights close to the harbor. With what funds, he didn't know, but Hermann hadn't asked and so Newt hadn't needed to make up any lies. He probably already knew, he was just too good a guy to say anything. At all. Ever again. Bastard.
It was maybe the sixth straight day of being awake that found Newt with his face down on the table, drooling on his tattered, stained notebook and the knocked over contents of whatever had been in his way when sleep finally overtook him. He managed to sleep for a surprisingly long time before the acidic burn made him jerk back awake and rummage for a water bottle to pour over his head. He'd run out of neutralizer and chemical wash ages ago. He wasn't even completely awake until the water was dripping down his nose, staining and blurring his haphazard writing under his chin.
The stinging on his cheek lessened a bit. He dropped into Hermann's old chair and closed his eyes. There wasn't much left in the labs, or in the whole of the Shatterdome, but if he tried he could pretend it was exactly the same as it had been over half a year ago, when it was full of people. He could hear the heavy thunk of strong Russian boots in the hall. The ringing bounce of a basketball on concrete. The hum of his specimen jars, Hermann's distracted muttering, Tendo laughing in the Hallway, Pentecost's sharp, professional knock on his door. The smell of chalk dust and ammonia. Soon, he'd go to the cafeteria with Hermann on his heels, hissing about his annoying habits and who on god's green earth put orange juice in their cereal. (He did, Hermann, so fucking deal with it, man.)
Newt slid out of the chair slowly and bonelessly, his hands over his face. He took huge, gulping breaths, his body shaking from tension and exhaustion. He felt like there was a vice on his chest, the smell of putrefying intestine making him lightheaded. Kaiju swam in his brain, people died, explosions shattered universes and somewhere in some reptillian hindbrain something whispered we're waiting.
He vomited.
That took a while to clean up.
Newt had wanted glorious, complete victory. Movie deals, magazine covers, comic books, signing tours, everyone alive and all their medals bright and shiny on their overdecorated chests. He hadn't imagined it like this. He was pretty sure Sasha One or Sasha Two (He'd never figured out who was who and they'd both answered to either and he should probably feel bad about that) was supposed to be giving him a piggy back ride through, like, fountains of vodka. He'd definitely made one of them promise that in a fit of drunken delirium. He'd wanted parties with his friends. He didn't even have any friends now. He just had a terrible, burning knowledge in the back of his mind that this wasn't over, that soon everyone else would join Pentecost and Hansen's kid and the Wei brothers at the bottom of the ocean. Something massive and terrible was just sitting out there, waiting for humanity to get complacent. He could see them, rising from the breach like a beautiful ghostly science experiment gone wrong, popping up across the entire world. They would bring the destruction of the whole world, in one fiery ball of awesome, and they'd be hunting him down when they did it. The drift went both ways. They wanted him now. They knew him. He could feel them back there - His connection to Hermann had faded, but he could feel the kaiju roiling in the back of his brain, shifting and writhing just out of the light, digging monstrous claws into his brain stem.
Newt stood suddenly, hands scrabbling over the desk as he felt the seawater filling his skull again, dirty colored neon and scales blazing behind his eyes, watching the fires of the cities of the world burning, water and blood in the streets of Hong Kong, of Tokyo, of London - he'd really wanted to go back to that shitty dive bar in Melbourne sometime - Sharp pain cut through the frantic fog overwhelming his brain. He inhaled deeply and looked down at the red oozing from his palm. He'd gripped a scalpel tight in his hand, shocking him out of the spiral. He cursed and dropped it. He was getting worse, and he knew it. His brain just...wandered away from him sometimes and hey, that was a lot of power to have wandering free and willy nilly. It was getting kinda hard to pull it back.
He could fix his hand easy enough, at least. There were still plenty of bandages and antiseptic left behind. They'd been stocked up on that, for sure, if not his fancier requests. He wouldn't bother to clean up the table or the scalpel. What was the point? He wasn't doing real work anymore. He was just...waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Truth be told, he was fairly sure everyone had forgotten about him. Nobody was taking his calls anymore. No major publications, no government organizations, no activist groups. The PDCC had emailed him and told him to get some rest. Some rest! The goddamn nerve. They didn't have nightmares like he had. They didn't wake up from the feel of Otachi's tongue sliding up their backs. All the people who had dreams like his had stayed with him, or were dead. Or, well, civilians. He's pretty sure he's not the only guy (or gal, or etc.) with some pretty nasty up close and kaiju memories knocking around in his head. (He probably had more to knock around in his head, but nobody liked it when he reminded them of that)
He'd dragged a whole medkit in here. He didn't really like venturing out of the lab, these days. It was the only place with power, for one. For another, it was getting hard to keep up with the daily nosebleeds and his vision in the eye he'd damaged during his drifts wasn't getting any better. Everything hurt, but that might be because he was down to emergency rations someone had forgotten to ship out and was barely eating anymore. He should get out. He should see a doctor. Ha, he was a doctor. Shows what doctors knew.
He sterilized and wrapped his hand messily, arms shaking from exhaustion. And hunger. He should eat. Eating meant venturing out of the lab, though, shuffling down darkened concrete and steel hallways toward the cafeteria. He told himself one more time that there was nothing in the Shatterdome to get him. It was nobody but him and the mice in here - a kaiju sure couldn't fit. Well. One could fit out in the loading bays, now that they were empty of the massive jaegers guarding them. That's why Newt never went out there. Blood dripped onto his knees, soaking through the dirty denim of his pants. He'd bandaged his hand, though - oh. It was just his nose again. He wiped at it, distracted, standing up.
He really was hungry. He squared his shoulders and pushed the door of the lab open, wincing as it creaked loudly in the otherwise silent bunker. He glanced around carefully before skittering out, but there was no one to lurk in the shadows here. Everyone had gone home. None of the locals had gotten past the massive doors to the outside, yet. He slunk along the dark hallway, dim emergency lights flickering to life here and there only to darken again. It was a long walk to the kitchens. He was sure if anything did try to follow him, he wouldn't hear it over the pounding of his heart and the roaring of his blood in his veins. He was breathing too loudly.
Nothing attacked him before he made it to the freezers, at least. One more day unscathed. He was sure Otachi and her beautiful demon baby were just waiting for him to let his guard down, though. He hunched over tepid rations and shoveled them into his mouth with bloody and bandaged hands. He didn't bother to try to taste or smell anything anymore. The food was all probably spoiled by now, and he could rarely use his nose well anyway. He must smell awful himself - the pipes hadn't carried water in ages. He couldn't remember the last time he'd washed. He'd run out of clean clothing. He had to keep working. Working was the most important thing - working meant he might be the one who got the jump on the kaiju this time. No terrifyingly awesome beast was gonna get the better of him ever again, no sir, fuck no. He'd be ready this time.
He whirled around, eyes searching the dark frantically. He'd heard something. The drag of a thick, leathery, scaled appendage. Hot breath down the back of his neck. Blue lights in the darkness. She had come for him, to swallow him whole and take him home. Maybe they'd appreciate his genius there. They wouldn't call him crazy or sigh in frustration and walk away. Maybe he could be like a god...
There was the noise again. A heavy thud, a scrape, distant... He tensed up. The noise came again and again. He breathed carefully as he realized it wasn't organic, but metallic - something striking against something else overand over, the heavy clang of steel against steel. He thought about scampering back into his lab, holing up behind his decaying specimens, pulling old equipment over him in camouflage. Leave me alone, he wanted to scream. You don't believe me and you don't have any right to be here!
They'd find him, though. He took a deep breath. Looters, probably. Criminals - maybe even some former members of the big crazy Chau guy's gang, looking for quick cash now that the big boss was Kaiju poo. There was metal in here, and some computer equipment, even some of his kaiju specimens were probably salvageable. He was holed up inside what was a veritable treasure trove to an enterprising lowlife. They'd probably shoot him. Maybe kick him a few times first, people had always liked kicking him when he was down. Or putting him in trashcans, man, what was it with college freshmen and putting nerds in trash cans?
He couldn't just sit here, though. Man, getting found hunched over old rations, dirty and raving and bloody - that was a little humiliating. Getting shot over them would be worse. Maybe he could pull a phantom of the opera, watch them from the shadows, lay claim to his dilapidated creepy old Shatterdome, no visitors allowed thank you very much. Well. He'd welcome a research team that was actually inclined to listen to him. And donuts. Fuck, he wanted a donut. And pizza. Did the looters have pizza? That would be fucking boss. He'd loot the looter's pizza. That'd teach them to touch his research.
Oh no, his research. Shit. They'd mess it up, he'd have to start over, they'd never be on top of the breach if it all got messed up - he needed to get back to it, hide it and protect it. He scrambled up on wobbly legs and hurried down the hall with a pathetic hopping, swaying limp-sprint. Hermann would have been proud. The little fucker had always been startlingly quick on his feet when he wanted to be. Thuds rang out behind him every step of the way, and he skidded to a halt by the laboratory doors followed by the whoomp of a distant explosion. Too close for comfort - they must have blown the doors. Someone was impatient. Shit. Newt would have to hurry. He scurried into the lab, grabbing notebooks and tablets and data records willy nilly. This was a mess, it was never that well organized and now it would just be in shambles, he should have listened to Hermann about the virtues of organization more often instead of turning his music up louder, the poor guy was always right - He could hear footsteps, loud, clanking, ringing down the hall.
"Shit, fuck, shit." he muttered. He didn't remember when he'd last spoken aloud. There hadn't been anyone to talk to, and talking to himself had gotten...weird.
There was only one door to the lab, that had to be a fire hazard, didn't it? He'd have to go out the way he came in. God, this place was poorly designed. He'd write a strongly worded email to someone someday about that. He stuffed the papers into his bag roughly, wincing as he heard some of them rip. No time. He fumbled the generator off quickly, wincing at the loud whine it made as the power wound down. He swung his bag over his shoulder, skittering back to the door as the footsteps grew louder and closer. Definitely more than one person. Some of them sounded...metallic? This couldn't be good. He was supposed to go down in the belly of a kaiju, not shot like a rat in a dirty old hallway. New-ish hallway. Whatever. He nudged the door open and peeked out. He could see a light bobbing in the distance - not distant enough. He squeezed out, trying to shut the door softly behind him. It clanged. The footsteps and the light were speeding up. He was so fucked. His best chance now was just to run, so he ran. He ran as fast as he could, which wasn't that fast at all, turning and scrambling haphazardly in the dark for a different way out. So many of the doors were automatically locked - some hung open, some were locked and would never be unlocked again. He wondered who had come to clean out the rooms of the dead pilots. Had anyone? Was all Chuck Hansen's clothing and posters rotting behind that door? No, his father'd probably taken it. Ha. Bet that would have just thrilled the little asshole.
He tripped and skidded for a second, banging his knees on the steps up to one of the doors. He yelped and gasped for air. The footsteps were still coming, they were still coming to get him. He had to get away. He had to survive. He got up slowly and painfully, hobbling down the hallway at a much slower pace. Where was he going? He couldn't see under the best of conditions right now, with one eye swollen and crusted almost shut, his glasses smudged and dirty, a little real light would have helped but now the only light belonged to whatever - whoever - was chasing him. He just kept turning, hoping - oh no. He recognized this hall. He was almost to the hanger.
Huge, cavernous, and pitch black, it rose into view ahead of him. He'd never spent much time in here when it was functional - he wasn't a pilot, he had brains inside his thick skull, thanks, so he had no reason to come down and rub elbows with the jocks. It was too unfamiliar. He didn't know where to run, and he couldn't see the ceiling or any of the other walls that stretched into blackness before him. He panted heavily, looking around in a panic. His knees wobbled and finally gave out, sending him crashing to the hard floor. This was the place he'd feared. Too empty, too open, anything could be lurking in the shadows here. Slick huge bodies that glowed like death and rebirth would peel out of the shadows in front of him and swallow both him and his new buddies whole. He wondered what it was like to be swallowed alive by a Kaiju. Too bad he'd never get to ask that Hannibal Chau guy. He bet it was awesome.
Oh, right. This was it. He was dead. They were right behind him, he could hear them jingling, like some kind of hokey old west villains. The varmints had done come to see him put six foot under in a pine wood box. The light bobbed in, brighter than anything Newt had seen for days. He squinted as it illuminated him, from his cracked and dirty fingernails to the blood soaking through the knees of his pants. Huh. He must have hit them pretty hard. He hadn't even registered the pain of the scrapes under the pain of everything else wrong with him. His nails were seriously disturbing - which, hey, no time for pedicures when science awaits, but he was sure they shouldn't be that coarse and bloody, thick and brownish yellow, like he was diseased. Weird. Maybe he should look into that. Oh. Wait. Right. Actively going to die in the next five minutes, it probably didn't matter.
He turned his head, eyes squeezed almost shut, to face his oncoming murderers. He couldn't see for shit with the light in the way, though, which was just plain unfair. If he was gonna die, he wanted a badass confrontation where he could at least see his killer's face. He had the vague impression of a massive silhouette behind a burning bright light, but there had to be more than one person here, if only he could just fucking see -
"Holy fuckin' geez, kid, what the hell happened to you?"