Chapter 41: Chapter 41: The Rift and the Silence
{AN: I'm planning on rewriting my 'Singularity: Lord of the Mysteries' story if I get time after finishing this story, as a reader requested I should continue writing it, but honestly I don't know where it took a hard left and the story digressed form what I wanted it to be. So if I go back to it, I will restart. Should I do this? Comment your thoughts.}
The sea was calm, deceptively so, as if the Pacific itself had chosen to hold its breath. Beneath the still surface, coiled in silence and darkness, Mark lingered in the depths. His immense frame moved only slightly, subtle shifts that displaced tonnes of water with barely a ripple. His ten tentacles were folded inward, overlapping like coils of a great serpent resting at the ocean floor, just beyond the fissure known to mankind as the Breach.
He had consumed much; more than any organism in recorded history, and his Omega Prime Class systems hummed with saturated potential. But potential was not completion. His internal metric hovered stubbornly at sixty percent, far from the full saturation required to initiate his next evolution.
A low rumble echoed in the silence of his mind, not pain, but hunger; an ancient, primal hunger laced with calculated patience. As his mind wandered, a flicker of memory drifted upward through layers of primal instinct and restructured intelligence.
He had seen the creature and mech before. Not in this life, but in his past; one long buried beneath flesh and fusion. There had been a movie once. They called it Pacific Rim.
The fissure below him was no mere wound in the Earth; it was the very rift from that story, the pathway to another world; a world filled with creatures not unlike Knifehead, Kaiju born from alien design and endless replication.
He considered it now, the reality of such a realm. Not myth, not fiction. The Kaiju had emerged from it. Knifehead was proof. The others would follow. And when they came, he would be waiting.
But passing through the Breach was not so simple. Mark pulsed his inner systems, reviewing the unintegrated data from the Knifehead carcass. One trait shone with potential, though it remained locked behind evolution.
[Genetic Profile Distortion (Lv 1): Allows temporary cellular rearrangement to replicate key Kaiju attributes, enabling short-term adaptation to hostile dimensional environments.
Without that ability, the gate would reject him. The rift did not open randomly to all life; it chose, it filtered, and only Kaiju passed through the dimensional membrane. His current structure, however altered, did not yet fully match the alien profile necessary for traversal. If he attempted to enter now, he would be torn apart or cast adrift between realities.
He needed more, more matter, more DNA, more radiation. Forty percent more to be precise. So, Mark remained still. Still; but vigilant. He would wait, and they would come. When they did, they would become part of him.
…
Far above the rift, far from the shadowed reach of Titanus Oodako, the battered remains of Gipsy Danger drifted toward the UEDC recovery fleet. Towed by magnetic cranes and shielded drones, the ruined Jaeger was hauled across the churning sea, its mangled limbs and melted reactor casing a grim reminder of its encounter with something beyond calculation.
Within the medical deck of the UEDC's largest carrier, Sam Brody stirred awake. Wires clung to his chest. His head throbbed. Across from him, Ford sat upright, his face wrapped in silent exhaustion.
They had survived. The machine had not.
"The reactor… it was eaten," Sam whispered, blinking away the memory.
Ford looked toward the ceiling, "We were powerless…"
"N- No! We were just caught off-guard!" Sam rebutted, a little flustered.
Ford turned to Sam with a hint of listlessness creeping back into his eyes, the same king he had felt when he lost the love of his life, "We were always powerless…"
…
Inside the war room aboard the floating base, Marshal Stacker Pentecost stood in silence before the holographic projection of Titanus Oodako's last known location.
The red glow on the screen flickered intermittently, but the conclusion was certain; the creature had returned. And it was waiting at the rift.
Around him, holograms of the G20 leaders sat in a semi-circle; presidents, premiers, chancellors, and generals. Each fed through high-bandwidth secure links, their faces framed in the cold blues and greys of digital transmission.
They were all speaking at once.
"Marshal Pentecost, this is no longer acceptable," barked the French president.
"We were led to believe the creature's threat level was limited—"
"You said it was dormant," the British Prime Minister snapped.
"It consumed our nuclear stockpiles," came the cold voice of the Chinese premier, "And yet we waited. Now it destroys our most advanced weapon."
"Not destroys," the Russian general interrupted, voice low and grim, "It consumed the core. Discarded the Jaeger. As if it were nothing."
"And it ate the Kaiju," muttered the American president, almost to himself.
Pentecost raised a single gloved hand. The room silenced at once.
"You all have access to the combat telemetry," he said, his voice deep and measured, "The Jaeger wasn't destroyed in battle. It was dissected. The nuclear core was extracted as though it knew what it was looking for. As for the Kaiju..."
There was a pause. No one wanted to speak those next words, but they hovered in the air like smoke.
The German Chancellor finally voiced it, "This creature; Titanus Oodako, it is more dangerous than the Kaiju. It is learning, adapting, and planning."
Another silence followed, thicker now, like the tension before a nuclear storm.
Pentecost exhaled through his nose, "If we wait, we will be devoured one piece at a time. It will consume every Kaiju. And then it will come for the rest of us."
The American president leaned into view, his face gaunt with fatigue, "We need every remaining Jaeger under your command, Marshal. Full international integration. Assemble them at the Hong Kong Shatterdome. It's the closest base not directly vulnerable to deep-sea attack."
The Marshal nodded once, slowly, "Understood. I'll mobilise all remaining units."
"And Marshal…" the Indian Prime Minister added, eyes hard, "this is not containment anymore. This is eradication. Do whatever you must."
Pentecost waited for each figure to confirm; one by one, world leaders nodded, until all twenty had committed to a single course of action. In that moment, there was no United Nations. There was no geopolitical friction. Only the shared understanding that something older than their nations, older than their world, was preparing for its final stage.
As the screens dimmed and the conference ended, Pentecost turned away, his expression unreadable. Below the decks, workers scrambled to ready the final Jaegers.
Men and women once hailed as saviours now moved like ghosts through hangars of steel and flame. Above the city of Hong Kong, clouds churned with distant lightning. The sea beyond rumbled with ancient echoes.
And at the edge of the world, waiting with infinite patience, Mark watched the rift for activity, his tentacles spreading across its surface, the golden and blue energy sparks bouncing off his toughened skin as water on a rock.