Chapter Text
Hershel swipes his keycard to enter his lab in the morning only to see a large slab of kaiju skin pinned out over the table and the figure of Marshall Sycamore silhouetted against it, his hand outstretched to take the door handle himself. A beat of awkward silence rings out as neither of them quite meet each other’s eyes, then the Marshall brushes past him with a cool nod of acknowledgement. Hershel watches him go until his thudding footsteps turn a corner, turns back to the lab and the first thing he sees is Emmy, standing in the middle of the room looking more than a little caught out.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Morning, Professor,” she says stiffly back, turning to the terminal on the wall. He’d expect her to say something more, especially with such a giant new specimen on the bench, but she stares resolutely at the screen in silence.
Puzzling. But Hershel’s good at puzzles—let’s see, the Marshall’s main preoccupation these days is keeping the Jaeger program alive. In particular, he’s raised concerns with Hershel about the Mountain Aureate being the only currently functional Jaeger they have, and with Arianna’s health being fragile, her and Luke may not be able to pilot often or for long. And Hershel happens to remember that Emmy wasn’t in the lab the last time Janice Quatlane visited the Shatterdome, which means—
“You don’t have to pilot the Melody if you don’t want to,” he says casually as he pulls a pair of gloves over his hands. “The Marshall knows that.”
A half-gasp escapes Emmy, and when he turns around, she’s looking at him with an almost anxious countenance that she quickly fixes into a smile, placing a hand lazily on her hip. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when you figure me out, Professor.”
“Marshall Sycamore is more predictable than you are,” chuckles Hershel. “But the point stands.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” she begins, the words bursting out given the opportunity. “It’s just that being a ranger is a big commitment, and I’ve never trained for it and I might not even be good at it—”
“Emmy, please,” says Hershel, holding up a hand. She pauses on the other side of the bench, mouth still half-open with reasons overflowing. But— “You don’t need to justify not wanting to become a ranger. Not to me.”
After a moment, Emmy’s face cracks and she shows her teeth in a half-smile. “I suppose not, Professor.”
Well, he’s glad that worked itself out. “Shall we start work on this?”
“Of course!” Her shoulders straighten and push out her chest, and just like that she unfolds the Emmy he knows so well, who points at the sky before she moves her focus to the kaiju skin. “I’ve almost finished scanning the markings, but on first inspection, they seem to be more of the same. I can’t make head or tail of them.”
“Another specimen to compare to is never a bad thing,” he murmurs, leaning over the bench. Now that his mentor Dr Schrader is officially retired, Hershel is the foremost expert on the study of the kaiju’s origins in the Shatterdome. This means shockingly little when you consider how much they actually know about them.
It’s believed that the markings are some kind of language. There’s a certain pattern that is on every kaiju, in a different place each time, but exactly the same nevertheless. That kind of control over the way the markings manifest indicates that they were put there on purpose. On very few of the other kaiju he has found similarly identical shapes or patterns, but it’s difficult to parse what they could mean when the kaiju have very little in common with each other. The only thing that is the same is that they are marked, and they destroy whatever they find.
Dr Schrader’s lasting theory was that they were the result of experimentation. Hershel can’t help feeling that they’re more complete than that. The experiment is over—what comes out of the breach is the finished product.
“What do you think we should name this one, Professor?” asks Emmy lightly. “I was thinking something… explosive, but Paul might kill me.”
“And that would mean a terrible loss for our lab,” Hershel replies gravely without looking up.
“You’re right. What about… Hydra? Since it has so many arms.”
“Emmy, a hydra has many—” He breaks off suddenly, staring at one of the patterns. It couldn’t be… the cogs in his mind start to turn with what Luke has always referred to as his ‘famous intuition’, but today it’s not a good thing. Rather than the last piece of the puzzle sliding into place, it feels more like the mechanism of a gun adjusting itself as the safety clicks off. “Can you find the scans of the Sea Dragon?”
There’s a beat of silence, and when he looks up, Emmy is watching him with apprehension. But she catches herself quickly. “Right away, Professor.” She returns to the terminal at the side of the room, types in a few numbers, and a familiar pattern appears on the wall. A pattern he’s studied for hours and hours, trying to understand its purpose. The markings of the kaiju that killed Randall.
“Here.” He points to a spot on the projection of the Sea Dragon on the wall, and then at the area he was inspecting on the bench. “Do you think they look similar?” he asks hoarsely.
Emmy glances at the wall, then back at the new specimen, and swallows. “I think they’re almost identical.”
They are. With the exception of one square within the larger pattern, they are the same pattern, printed on two different kaiju. Two kaiju with one, quite glaring point in common.
But how could that be possible? Randall’s death was a coincidence, the result of recklessness and bad luck. Wasn’t it?
“I need to report this to the Marshall,” he says distantly, not really hearing Emmy’s reply, although he feels her eyes on him as he crosses the room to the terminal and starts writing. There has to be a reason for all this. But he’s not sure if he even wants to know what it is.
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
“Am I bothering you?” asks Flora, hovering with one foot in the doorway and both hands wrapped around her middle. It still stinks of burning plastic in the lab, much stronger without a mask, and the smell makes her stomach turn.
Paul throws his head back to stare at the ceiling and sighs. “Everyone’s bothering me and the world is doomed to be torn apart by creatures from the nightmare dimension.” There’s a silence, then his eyes flick over to her. “You can come in, if that’s what you’re asking.”
She sidles in past the cabinets. Paul's lab has never exactly been pristine—he doesn't believe in organisation systems that anyone other than him can follow. He has a metal workbench in the centre of the room, his forge for all things Jaeger, and you can judge the importance of everything by its proximity to said bench. For example, a packet of cigarettes teeters on the edge of it, despite the several fire-producing machines next to them, while protective gear for the technicians sits forgotten in a corner.
Or, it did. The pale walls of that corner display an array of scorch marks, with shrapnel sticking out of the cabinets and a pile of charred dust spilling over it. Perhaps the bomber didn't know much about Paul and didn't realise the workbench was the most effective target? That would narrow down her suspect list a little. Then again, could anyone have hidden a bomb under his workbench without his noticing? It could have been a practical consideration.
Flora sighs internally. She's not getting anywhere.
"What are you moping about today?" asks Paul, and she jumps. He's staring right at her with his beady eyes and she hadn't even noticed.
Remembering the Marshall's demand for secrecy, she shifts her shoulders and looks at the blackened floor. "I'm not moping."
"Did Layton say something stupid again?" he presses, and she shakes her head. "Had an argument with one of your little friends?"
"Nothing happened," Flora insists. "Well, except for…"
She gestures vaguely to the state of the lab, and Paul makes one of his customary growl-like sounds of irritation. "You don't have to tell me. Months of work, smashed to pieces, and they don't even know who did it."
"Who looked into it?" she asks, perching on the side of the workbench.
"The people in security mostly," he answers, leaning over his project again with a drill in hand. "Apparently there was no forced entry. So it was definitely someone in here."
Flora shudders. The Marshall must have known that already—that's why he put her on the case. "What about the bomb? Did you find anything there?"
He shrugs without looking up. "Mostly scrap. A couple of kaiju bones for flavour. There was nothing unique in it."
So no leads whatsoever. It's hard not to let her frustration show, and she feels her arms tense up with the effort of it, almost tears forming in the back of her eyes. She blinks them away quickly, but not quick enough to stop Paul narrowing his eyes at her.
She washes away the frustration, and smiles at him. "What?"
"Something's bugging you," he says, leaning back in his seat and wagging a pair of tweezers in her direction. "Are you that pressed about a couple of Targent spies? They've been trying to take us down since the beginning."
"But this is the first time they've set off a bomb in the Shatterdome," Flora points out. "And the Professor's friend came back from the dead. Don't you think you should worry?"
"I do that every day, working here," snorts Paul, throwing both hands up in the air. He's not wrong—the years in the Shatterdome squeeze skin over his bones, bags under his eyes, half-shaved stubble over his sallow face. But Paul's like a tea kettle. He survives the fire licking at his heels even if he shrieks half the time doing it.
Not like Flora. She's more like butter once the heat goes on.
And half the time, she can't even tolerate her meagre responsibilities when they display such crippling injustice. "I just don't understand," she muses aloud, leaning against the bench. "Why would people side with the kaiju? Don't they see that the Jaegers are the only reason they haven't been destroyed yet?"
Always ready with a sarcastic quip, Paul responds to this question in silence, and places both hands on the workbench. There are scars dotted over them, big and small, from fire or chemicals or plain workshop hazards, climbing up his fingers and onto his wrists. It's as though the Jaegers have almost destroyed him, and he's hanging on by a thread.
"War makes people lose their heads," he says with a shrug. "We all do irrational things."
"Like you," Flora prompts, and he rolls his eyes.
"Can't we let that one go?"
"You kidnapped me," she responds petulantly.
"Alright, alright," says Paul sourly, spinning his stool around.
In another conversation she would make fun of him, but instead she presses. "But you did all that because you wanted the war to end. Why are they doing it?"
Paul stares into the middle distance as he twists a spanner round on the table. "You can read the Targent manifesto if you like. Might be able to make more sense of it than I can."
"They have a manifesto?" Flora scrunches up her face. "What does it say?"
"Oh, you know." He shrugs, leaning over the workbench. "Stop making those giant robots, give us all your kaiju bits so we can do freaky rituals with them. The usual lunatic stuff."
There's a silence as Flora contemplates this, but ultimately she decides Paul may or may not be making this up. "Why do you think they do it?" she asks despondently.
Paul's hands pause over his workstation. He's eerie when he goes quiet and still like that, the mad scientist in him brewing his next scheme. "Maybe they want it all to end too," he says darkly. "They just don't care which side wins anymore."
Flora shudders again, fighting with a swirling unease in her chest. It's hard for her to imagine—she was just a baby when the kaiju war began, too young to remember a time before the sea was a dangerous frontier and evacuations became the norm. She's only heard of it from her father, the Professor, and even Paul. A time before this ever-present fear. What would she do to get that back, if she was them?
"It doesn't matter," says Paul, banging his spanner on the table as if to strike the thought from their minds. "Because we're going to win, in the end."
"Right!" That's the attitude Flora should be taking. So the composition of the bomb doesn't tell her much. She just needs to move to the next area of interest—security. "I'm going to… see the Professor," she says, remembering the Marshall's instructions to be suspicious of everyone. "I'll see you later."
"I don't know about that, I'll be stuck in here for days at this rate," Paul replies with his usual ragged depression. "If I ever make it out alive, I'll see you."
"Don't be dramatic," says Flora with a tut, and closes the door before he can throw something at her.
✼ ҉ ✼ ҉ ✼
Hershel bursts into the Marshall's office, only to see Sycamore's chair empty. The room itself though, is not empty. Henry and Angela turn mechanically in unison, so used to fighting as a unit that their movements naturally fall in sync. When their eyes hit him, Hershel falters, and he stammers, "What are you two doing here?"
Angela scoffs slightly, tossing her short ponytail out of her face. "What do you mean, what are we doing here?"
She's always been the more abrasive of the two, split into jagged cracks by the consistent pounding loss of the war. Henry on the other hand, has been eroded by his life's many hardships until it left him perfectly smooth on all sides. He ignores Angela's question, and tilts his head. "What are you doing here, Hershel?"
"I… wanted to speak to the Marshall," Hershel replies, so hesitant he almost steps back as he says it.
And Angela closes the gap immediately. "About Randall?"
He looks away from her fierce gaze. "It seems there isn't much else to talk about."
"Come on, Hershel," Angela pleads. "We finally have a chance to get Randall back, and so far the Marshall is having none of it. I know we've had our differences in the past but surely you can help us now."
There's a ragged, desperate note to her voice as she speaks but when he looks up at her eyes, they gleam with a spark that almost seems like… hope. "You really believe it's him?" he asks quietly.
Angela exchanges a glance with Henry, and he nods. "We do."
Well, the pair of them never accepted Randall was dead in the first place. They begged for the story of his loss over and over, searched the hillside long after Hershel had given up. He couldn't understand it. He felt Randall slip through his fingers—warm flesh turned to cold air. There was no question after he woke up in the infirmary that Randall was lost to him, another casualty in the long saga of war.
But somehow, Henry and Angela stayed resolute, hopeful to the point of delusion, that Randall was out there somewhere. It hurt to hear. Sometimes he even wished there had been a body, so that they could have grieved instead of arguing over possibilities. Instead Hershel took to avoiding Henry and Angela, spending less and less time with the other ranger cadets, and more time in the Jaeger workshop.
That was where he met Claire, and a whole new chapter of loss had begun anew.
Maybe that's what drives him to his sorry conclusion. "Randall was not cruel," he says bitterly. "He would never join Targent, or turn on humanity. I can't believe that it's the Randall we knew."
"It's been seventeen years," Henry replies without a ripple in his face. "We don't know where he's been."
"If we could talk to him," adds Angela. "We might find out. Don't you want to know?"
Does he? Does he dare to hope that some of the guilt he carries around with him could be alleviated? The thought occurred, when he saw the marks on that kaiju. But he already knows it's too painful to even consider.
And he's saved from having to consider it when the door bangs open, and in walks Marshall Sycamore. He too, is taken aback for a split second at Hershel's presence, but quickly recovers. "I'm glad you're here, Layton," he says briskly, walking in with his hands behind his back. "We can get this over with."
"Get what over with?" Angela folds her arms, following the Marshall's path with suspicion. "What did you want us for?"
The reasons for their summons seems obvious to Hershel—the unknown element is what will come out of it. Marshall Sycamore reaches his desk and turns gracefully on his heel to face the three of them, and says, "Randall Ascot is a threat to humanity. He must be neutralised."
"No."
The word seems to come out of Henry's mouth without permission, like a fish breaking the surface of his still water. Angela lays a hand on his shoulder as he stands with both hands clenched into fists, trembling imperceptibly. "We won't do that," he says almost hoarsely. "You can't make us."
"I wouldn't expect you to," replies the Marshall without meeting his eyes. "Ascot is not a kaiju, and does not need to be dealt with by the Jaegers. I will put together a team of pilots for the job."
"Then what's the point of you telling us?" demands Angela. "You expect us to lay down and accept it?"
"That's exactly what he expects." Henry stares the Marshall down, shaking his head slightly. "Telling us is simply a formality."
Marshall Sycamore smiles hollowly. "I'm glad you understand."
Hershel stands still, letting the conversation continue around him. It doesn't feel like a conversation that involves him; he feels as though he's watching it all happen from a distance, as Angela and Henry rail against the inevitable and the axe falls on Randall somewhere far away.
"He was one of us, Sycamore!" Angela bursts out, forgoing the Marshall's usual title. "You trained with him right back at the beginning of the war. And you're ready to let him die?"
"War requires sacrifices." The words fall heavy from Sycamore's mouth, seeming to push him down physically so he has to rest his hands on the desk. "Back when I knew Ascot, I believe he understood that. I know it's hard," he says, suddenly shifting his tone to one that betrays some vulnerability and looking Angela in the eye. "But the people we love are not immune to turning against us."
She makes a dismissive noise, and looks away, her eyes glinting slightly under the yellow light. There's a silence where Hershel wonders if he can make his escape now and report his findings later. But then a knock rings out at the door.
Ignoring the atmosphere, Sycamore calls, "Come in!"
Hershel turns around to see Aurora's head poke around the door. "Professor, you left your glasses in the training room," she says, holding them up.
"Thank you, Aurora," says Sycamore, losing all the grit of his military bark. "You can leave them on the desk."
Aurora skips across to his desk to put them down, glancing at the party in the office with a little curiosity, but not enough to say anything. "See you later, Professor," she says, and turns around with a faint smile as she starts to walk towards the door.
Then she stops.
If you're paying attention, you know before Aurora does. The way her face pales, goes blank. It's the drop in your stomach the instant you lose your footing, the crunch of an unexpected bone in your mouthful, the realisation that the tidal wave is too close to run. Half a whimper escapes her mouth and she wobbles on her feet, turning back to Sycamore. "Professor…"
"What's wrong?" All of them stare at her in concern, but the Marshall is the one to approach her, putting a hand on her arm.
Aurora shakes her head. "Something is… coming."
"Again?" demands Angela incredulously.
Sycamore doesn't react, only leans down to study Aurora's face. "Are you sure?"
She nods, slowly. "I don't know how, but… it must be."
Silence falls over them. It's highly unusual for kaiju attacks to fall even in the same week, but only a day? This is unnatural. And so soon after Randall's reappearance… Hershel knows, with grim conviction, that this is no coincidence.
And he can see that Sycamore knows it too. He plants a kiss on the top of Aurora's head and squeezes her arm before he lets go. "Thank you," he says in a low voice, and turns to the rest of them. "I'll sound the alarm. We'll send the Vigilante Boston to meet it."
"What?" Henry and Angela's shock comes in unison again, and both of them scramble to follow the Marshall as he approaches his desk. "They haven't even trained in the hangar!" protests Angela.
"Ascot demanded a 'her', remember?" Marshall Sycamore reminds her icily. "Have you considered that could be you, and I would be giving him what he wants?"
"They could die!" Henry's calm has almost evaporated now, drawing tortured lines across his face. "How can you send them over us?"
Alarms begin to sound, and Hershel watches the Marshall straighten his back, face impassive. "I cannot trust you two to be impartial in the field right now. Triton and Barde have shown impressive results in training and we are at war. We cannot wait for everyone to be ready."
A tense silence descends as footsteps thump against the metal floors all around them. Sycamore slams his hand on the desk. "Command centre. Now."