They're
Here.
Mike jittered awake. His classmates beside him flinched. "Okay ka lang, Mike?" someone said.
There it was again. That dream. Of some booming, bellowing voice calling for Mike from somewhere deep below the earth.
"Bangungot?" another asked.
Mike decided not to dwell on it. "Yeah, bangungot lang." For months now he's had many more just like this, that same faceless roar speaking to him in his sleep. Around the same time the dreams began, he's experienced... changes. Changes he'd rather not share with anyone.
Before his classmates could pry him any further, the alarms in the hallway blared. An earthquake drill? He thought to himself. Then, he felt the floor shudder. Okay, not a drill.
"Evacuate! Evacuate!" some professor declared outside the halls to all the classrooms.
"Tara na, Mike," his classmate pleaded, pulling him out of his chair.
Exiting the room into the Dagot Halls of his University, Mike saw a sea of students washing through the hallway and down the flights of stairs. He could barely hear the sound of the professors shouting discipline over the disaster alarms. He noticed, though, that every now and then the ground beneath them would quake for an instant and then stop.
And on every quake, somewhere close enough to be heard, there was a boom. What kind of earthquake makes a sound?
When Mike finally reached the first floor, he was surprised to see the sea of students in front of him standing still. Ano ba, evacuate nga di ba?
They're
Here.
There it was again. That voice, only now in his waking hours. Am I still dreaming?, he thought to himself.
Mike.
Protect
Them.
Again, and again. "Protect them," it said, somehow clearer in his head than the murmuring students and blaring alarms. Protect them from what?
Then, the ground beneath him shook stronger somehow, and the boom was a lot, lot closer now. Just as it did, the murmurs turned to screams.
Somehow, Mike felt the voice calling in his bones. Not in words, but in motion. His legs sprung into action faster than he could think, and he leapt and nudged every student aside until... he was in front.
The first word that came to Mike's mind was big. Something taller than the Dagot Hall's gates stood between them and the exit. Something made of metal, something heavy, some spine-chilling thing that was... shaped like a human but wrong somehow.
The second word escaped through his tongue: "Run!"
Beyond the speed of thought, Mike pushed the students at his side to run to the opposite gate, the one underneath the main stairway and lead to the outside garden. The hall was a small enough space that the metal man thought it necessary to simply walk towards them. Every step it made sent a shudder to the hearts of everyone there.
They're not gonna make it, Mike figured. People can be fast and nimble on their own, but pack them together in a herd and people are easy prey.
Mike thought about how large the thing in front of him was, how alien it looked. And he figured, the bigger things are the slower they moved, right? The Mike of this moment, for a reason that escaped his understanding, was someone willing to bet his life on that guess.
"Keep going!" he shouted at the crowd as he leapt at the metal man. Before he could think about the idiocy of his decision, he found himself sliding between the legs of the metal man. Up close it seemed larger than life, too large to be brought down. Slowly, the metal man turned around to face Mike, who had his back to what he now realized was the broken-in gates of the Dagot Hall.
The metal man didn't have a recognizable face. Somehow, Mike understood one thing: it was watching him, observing him, the way a proctor would watch him in his exams.
Come on, come on, Mike whispered to himself, switching his sights from the metal man and the sea of students bit by bit cascading out the garden gate.
"N am e," it spoke. Mike thought he was hearing things before it spoke again. "W hat i s y O ur n am e."
It sounded broken, like a boulder breaking itself to speak English. "Mikey. Mercado," Mike replied.
"W RO N G!" the metal man raised his fists.
From some strength unknown to Mike, his legs propelled him away just in time to make the metal man crunch the concrete floor to dust instead of his head. "Y ou," it said, giving chase to Mike. "A r e g O ji ra!"
Run.
The voice was there again, sounding urgent this time. Duh, Mike thought to himself.
Trying not to dwell too much on the words of the metal man, Mike ran past it to catch up to his fellow students and professors.
Finally outside the Dagot Hall, Mike was surprised to find no one there. The garden was a narrow stretch of a grassy green walkway along the side of his university. The quickest way to exit would've been to climb the wall to get outside.
Mike, now feeling jittery in his legs, leapt to climb. But as he found himself on top and one more grasp away from freedom, he felt a zap that threw him off the wall. "What the fuck," he uttered, shaking the numbness off his hand. Looking closer now at the university wall he realized there was a translucent shimmering film, like a dome, that covered the university top to bottom. He looked to his left and saw it stretched as far as his eye could see. He looked to his right and saw the same and more—his classmates and professors facing the metal man. But wait, was it the same metal man?
No, the metal man was already right behind him. Before Mike could stand to run, the metal man grabbed him by the neck. Mike felt his windpipe begging release.
"G o ji ra, acq ui red," the metal man spoke, though something lead Mike to believe it wasn't speaking to him. Mike was kicking the air trying to get the metal man's grip to loosen as black scales flaked off the skin of his arm.
Far away, in that crowd of students facing the other metal man, one professor stood out in front. "Relax, everyone, calm down, everything will be fine," he said, not at all believing his own words.
"W he re g O ji ra," that metal man spoke with that same broken voice.
The professor was frozen in place, his lips quivering to say the same thing over and over again. Relax, calm down, relax, calm down.
In an emotion not far off from impatience, that metal man swatted the professor aside, followed suit by a wave of screams. In an instant, what was left of him was nothing but a man-sized stain on the university's wall.
Mike saw everything.
BURN
THEM
ALL.
The pain of his crushed windpipe disappeared from Mike's attention. His ears rang as the voice chanted louder, and louder, and louder.
BURN THEM ALL!
YOU ARE READING
Kaiju Core
ActionLife on planet Earth faces a great threat from the stars. The only thing standing in their way is a team of would-be heroes chosen to become avatars of Earth's first defenders: the legendary kaiju.
