Lorna LaFey's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The walls rose because the Kaiju stayed calm. The Kaiju stayed calm because of the drug. Lorna went to the lab to check the supply. She had put off asking Vanessa the hard number for weeks. Vanessa Bancroft made KaijuX. She had synthesized it from Kaiju tissue, and it now held Terra's body together. Lorna trusted her to keep the doses flowing. She had never once watched Vanessa count the stock herself. Vanessa stood at the cold locker. She did not look up. She was counting vials into a tray, lips moving. Lorna waited until she finished. "How much do we have?" Lorna asked. "Eleven days," Vanessa said. She set the tray down. "At current doses. For the whole sanctuary." Lorna's chest went tight. "Then make more." "I can't. The tissue source dried up." Vanessa met her eyes. "The last batch came from stored samples. Those are gone. Without fresh Kaiju tissue, there is no more KaijuX." "Eleven days," Lorna repeated. "And then?" "Then every calmed Kaiju goes feral. Overnight. All of them at once." Vanessa's voice dropped. She never softened bad news, but she made it quieter. "I should have told you sooner. I was trying to stretch it first." Lorna thought of the field. The burrower with its plow claws. The mole-Kaiju that could gut a city block if the calm broke. She thought of the board and their guns. Terra filled the lab doorway. She had heard. She always heard. "You need tissue," Terra said. "Fresh. From a Kaiju." "From a living one," Vanessa said. "Dead tissue degrades too fast." Grey climbed down from the high vent where she liked to sit. "Okay so. You need a Kaiju to give up part of itself." She folded her arms. "That's a big ask." Terra stepped forward. She pulled off her jacket and set it on the counter. "Take it from me," she said. The room went still. Vanessa's glasses caught the light. "You're the only proof this works," Vanessa said. "If I cut you, and the sample doesn't take, you fall apart." "Then don't miss," Terra said. She held out her arm. The rigid plates down her back rose. "Everyone else stays calm because I did it first. So I do it again." Lorna wanted to refuse. Terra had trusted her once, in a pen, and that trust built all of this. Now Terra offered her own body to keep it standing. "Do it," Lorna said. Vanessa drew the sample fast. Terra did not flinch. By dusk the lab hummed. Vanessa held a fresh vial to the light. The KaijuX held. The supply would flow again. But Vanessa set the vial down and looked at Terra's healing arm. "One donor," she said. "One body. If the sanctuary keeps growing, one Kaiju can't feed it forever." Lorna had saved the calm for now. She had also learned the truth. Her whole sanctuary ran on Terra's flesh, and Terra was only one creature.