Lorna LaFey's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Friday came fast. Six new Kaiju were on trucks now, roaring toward the Initiative. Lorna stood in the gray hall and did the math again. Her enclosures held one Kaiju each, and she had proven the chain worked. But she had never staged six frightened newcomers at once. If one panicked before a calm link reached it, it could break loose and set off the rest. Six loose Kaiju inside the walls. The board watching. The guns waiting. She found Terra in the loading bay, staring at the empty enclosures. Terra was the first Kaiju Lorna ever rehabilitated, and the only one who caught her own mistakes before Lorna could. She flexed her huge feet against the floor, the way she did when she wanted to stomp and would not let herself. "You can't calm six lines of trucks alone," Lorna said. "No," Terra said. "You'd lose me by the third." Azzie leaned in the doorway, wig perfect. "So don't put six angry ones in a row. Space them." She checked her nails. "One at a time works. I did it." "There's no room for a queue," Lorna said. "They arrive together." Grey spoke from up on a stack of cargo crates. She was the third one rehabilitated, a gargoyle who watched more than she talked. She had climbed up without anyone noticing. "Okay so," Grey said. "You keep thinking flat. Ground floor." She pointed a stone finger up the shaft that ran through the tower's core. "There's like six floors right there. Doors on every one. Nobody uses half of them." Lorna looked up the hollow center of the building. Six levels. Six lockable bays, one above another. A frightened Kaiju on the second floor could not reach one on the fourth. "One newcomer per floor," Lorna said slowly. "Isolated. Then a calm one goes in beside each." "Three of us," Grey said. "Two runs. Terra takes the loud ones. Azzie takes the vain ones." She shrugged. "I'll sit with whatever's left." They moved before Lorna could second-guess it. Security cleared six upper bays. The trucks rolled in and the crew split the haul, one Kaiju to each floor. The roaring started, then multiplied, shaking the shaft. Terra climbed to the loudest floor first. Azzie took the next. Grey settled beside a third and simply sat, still as stone, until the creature stopped screaming. One by one the calm passed through the doors. No newcomer ever stood near another. None broke loose. By dark, six calmed Kaiju breathed in six separate bays. The board members walked the levels and counted every one alive. "You held it," the lead member said. "The sanctuary is yours to build." Lorna should have felt relief. Instead she looked at the crowded tower and knew the truth. Six calmed Kaiju had nowhere to go now. The Initiative was a holding cell, not a home. She had earned the sanctuary. Now she had to raise it before the walls filled past what they could hold.