Archive of Our Own

     “<Once upon a time,>”

 Hermann’s mother began.

     “<There were two girls equal in [loveliness] but very different in disposition. Even if both were [beautiful] on the outside the younger of the two was kind, modest and gentle while the eldest was haughty, [vain] and lazy.>”

Hermann didn’t know what all these words meant but he didn’t dare ask for fear of interrupting. His mother was speaking in Bavarian but at times she would sprinkle in words of the family language; the tongue of his father and grandfather now long dead. These words sent small shivers down Hermann’s backbone and he ate them up hungrily hoarding them in his mind to be examined later and dissected.

     “<While the younger girl often [toiled] for long hours to please her mother, her sister had no such compunctions and would [laze] about the house letting her sister do the [daily] chores. One day their mother told the youngest to make a [long and difficult] trip through [dark forest] and over [steep] hills to a lovely fountain to get a jug of water. She did so without complaint setting out as the sun rose…for the [journey] was a long one.>”

The wind howled fiercely outside Hermann’s bedroom window and he shuddered pulling his quilts close. It sounded like a giant animal, a big bad wolf waiting to devour him in its hot, red jaws. His mothers face was obscured by jumping shadows. The only illumination shone from the toy planetarium Hermann used as a nightlight. It spewed out a dim universe on the high wooden ceiling of his room, casting fluctuating images from the Hubble over his walls and bookshelves in soothing patterns. The projected moon sailed overhead and his mother’s voice was somehow louder then the winter outside, her words fluttering in between multiple languages with practiced ease.

      “<As the younger girl made her way home from the [crystal] fountain she heard a voice as [crinkled] as old lace. Turning she beheld an old woman with skin like yellowed paper. Please, the crone pleaded, let me have a drink from your pitcher? My throat is [dusty and dry] and I only need the {--------} sip…>”

Hermann drew a soft breath to say something, but was cut off by the banging of a distant shutter. His mother had said a word he didn’t understand. It was neither a word of Bavarian, English or the Gottlieb language. She paused and looked at him intensely; waiting for him to speak, to ask a question. He said nothing and turned away almost ashamed. She continued on voice level and flat.

She had told Hermann this story was important. That she had waited until he was old enough to appreciate it. He was still learning his family language but he was fluent in Oberbayern Bavarian, Berliner German and passable in a few other Regional languages. Hermann was proud that he could feel the meanings of words in his bones. Understand them with his heart.

     “<Of course grandmother! Of course! The young girl said. [Drink] your fill from my cup. So the old woman did. She drank the jug dry and smiled a toothless smile. You are a kind girl and I can see that inside you are beautiful. For every word you speak a [priceless] jewel or [rare] flower will fall from your lips and your {----} love will know your words no matter what shape they take. This is the gift I give to you. Then the old woman disappeared.>”

She paused, her hand seeking out Hermann’s and lacing his fingers through her own. Her hand felt frail, and when Hermann squeezed it he could feel her bones though the skin. Her flesh was cold and there was a weakness there that scared him. She had spoken another word that did not sound like Gottlieb or Garmisch Bavarian. It had been a word with fluttery syllables and a feeling that was distinctly…his mother. He was sure of it. She had spoken a forbidden word. A personal and un-writable thing from her own language…she had shared it with him.

     “<Returning home late and with no water to show for her [journey] the young girl was immediately scolded by her mother. How could you wander all day and have nothing to show for it! You should receive a [whipping] for this! The girl began to weep and opened her mouth to tell of her encounter with the [mysterious] old woman and as she did diamonds, rubies and orchids poured from her lips. Ah! Said her mother, you have been granted a boon by a [good] fairy! Your sister should also have this gift. I will send her for water from the well tomorrow and when she meets the old woman she will give her water from the fountain!>”

One of the first words of the family language Hermann had learned was [sick]. It was an ugly word in all languages but in the Gottlieb tongue it was twisted, gnarled and had the taste of wet cardboard when spoken. It could be used many ways in the context of the guttural old family speech but in the beginning they had used it as a way to talk about his mother without him and Bastien, the youngest, knowing. It hadn’t taken long to figure it out.

     “<After much complaining the elder sister finally set out to the fountain as the sun lay high overhead. She filled her jug and on her way back home was met by a regal young woman [bedecked] in silks and finery. The fine lady beseeched the girl for a drink of water. Please, she begged, I have been traveling for so long. I am [desperate] for just a sip of your water! The older sister snorted her nose [pointed skyward]. You’re obviously a rich noblewoman! I did not get this water for you!>”

Hermann curled his hand tighter around his mothers and watched one of his planetarium’s pre-loaded star-maps pass languidly over her gaunt face. She looked so tired, as if the very act of speaking exhausted her, the words spilling out of her taking everything vital with them.

     “<The fine lady, who was really the good fairy in a disguise, shook her head in dismay. You are a [selfish girl] and I can see that inside you are cold. For every word you speak a [slimy] toad or [writhing] snake will fall from your lips. Your {----} love will know your words no matter what shape they take. This is the gift I give to you. Then the old woman disappeared>”

Tilting his head sideways, Hermann furrowed his eyebrows together as his throat swelled tight with questions. This story wasn’t like the other fairytales. No one ever got a gift for being cruel or insolent. His mother pulled her hand back slowly and curled her fingers through Hermann’s soft hair stroking a thumb along his cheek.

     “<The girl [rushed] home and told her mother all that had happened. As she did snakes, toads and [thorny vines] fell from her lips to the ground. Her mother shook her head sadly and was glad that her eldest had been given a lesson. And so the two girls [grew] up and went into the world to make their own destinies. For better or for worse.>”

     “What! That’s not an ending! The good girl married a prince didn’t she? Or she …she was rich because of the gems she spit out?”

His mother smiled without her teeth. The sort of smile where her lips turned up and her eyes crinkled at the corners.

     “The girl whose inner language is pearls and gems may not speak the same as a prince. What if every time he speaks fireflies and bones fall from his lips? What if the person who also speaks with gems and flowers is a butcher or a woodcutter? She has the choice to be with a prince but they might not always understand each other.”

     “But…the other girl got punished for not sharing her water?”

     “Mmm…what if she learns from her mistake? What if she becomes a better person and finds someone who likes snakes and frogs?”

     “I-…that doesn’t make sense!”

     “Most stories do not have satisfying endings Hermann. Either girl has the ability to live how she likes and who knows what will happen?”

Hermann puzzled over this fumbling absently with the corner of a crocheted blanket.

     “So the fairy doing what she did-…was the story was about the inside language? About Core Lingua?”

     “Why don’t you tell me what you think it’s about?”

Hermann’s mother waited quietly her face a blank mask. She would take his answer seriously and Hermann wanted so badly to answer correctly he felt anxiety seize his vocal chords. He wasn’t used to voicing his own thoughts. It took a long moment to shape what he wanted to say. She might have given him some clues or she might not have. His eight-year-old brain buzzed, mulling over the two sisters and their gifts.

     “Well, I think…umm…”

     “Yes?” She gave an encouraging nod and leaned in expectantly. A fresh gust of wind sent a tree scratching at the window. Snow blew through the rafters and rattled the roof searching for chimneys.

     “I think it’s about doing the right thing? It’s better to be full of flowers and diamonds right? It will be...easier for her then the snake sister?”

His mother’s hands kept moving over Hermann’s face and through his hair. Her fingernails were always cut to the quick. She would sometimes scratch her own skin involuntarily when the pain came at night.

     “It might not always be easier to be full of flowers with every person. It’s good to be kind but not to be taken advantage of. They will certainly meet more fairies in their lives and they almost always wear disguises.”             

     “So...…the story is about how we have to pick our words carefully? I’m really confused. The snake girl was punished but you make it seem like she wasn’t.”

Her lips brushed against his forehead, chapped silk on his skin. She spoke in the family language now. Not a Bavarian or English word to be found between the guttural syllables spoken by long dead ancestors. She spoke slow and deliberately making sure Hermann could understand everything word.

     “[The true secret is that the story isn’t really a story at all…just the beginning of one.]”

She looked into his eyes and it was a solace to see they were the same color as his; honey and chocolate.

     “[Both of the girls made a choice. Their actions revealed something that was already inside. The choices you make and the path you take is your choice. All the wild creatures…the dragons and wolves and fairies that you’ll meet in your life will challenge you and show you if your inner voice is heather or hemlock. You need to be brave enough to accept the path you’ve chosen and the language you speak. That is the true message.]”

The cold air screeched through the cracks of the house and Hermann threw his arms around his mother’s waist. The edge of his hand brushed her backbone and he felt a deep freezing dread in his gut.

     “What If I’m not brave enough?”

     “You will be.”      

     “How do you know?”

She rocked him rubbing his back whispering just above the winter. Her answer was soft in the hummingbird whisper of her Core Lingua. Hermann didn’t understand, but still felt comforted.

     “So I just…upload a recording?”

Tendo put his feet up on the edge of Newt’s computer desk his attention briefly diverted from his lunch. He pulled his sandwich away from his mouth long enough to answer.

     “Yeah man. I use it and so does half the dome. Uttered. U-t-t-e-r-e-d dot com. You go and make an account with all your info like your age and your e-mail address, then you upload an example of your family language and at least ten words of your Core language.”

Newt twisted his mouth skeptically and stared at his computer screen as he tried to pop open a bag of freeze dried fruit. B-Ration quality lunches were always a delight.

     “I dunno how I feel flinging random snippets of Core up at some random dating site…It feels kinda filthy.”     

     “Since when did you become a prude? And it’s not a dating site-It’s sophisticated match-maker software. It looks for similarities in the linguistic algorithms of your language and matches it to other people’s recordings. So far since I signed up I got a two ten percent matches and a thirty percent. One of the tens is in Juneau and our e-mails have been pretty spicy.”

Newt made a face as he chewed on a mummified slice of dried banana.

      “Linguistic algorithms? That sounds like a bunch of bullshit parading as pseudo-science. They aren’t going be able to find your Argot with a few phrases spoken into a computer mic.”

Tendo put a dramatic hand to his forehead, spewing crumbs as he spoke around a mouthful of sandwich.

     “Oh, ye biologist of little faith. This is the future that we’re living in! You work for an organization that builds skyscraper sized robots and uses them to kill monsters from an infinite pit at the bottom of the ocean. A website that might get you a chance at true love is really what you’re gonna call BS on?”

Newt pursed his lips and pretended to consider before pointing at Tendo in mock revelation.

     “Yes.”

He gestured to his computer with a dourly serious expression.

     “Remember that one app? Um…Verbal? Yeah that was it- and before Verbal? Waaaay back in the 90’s there was that monster super-computer called Metatron that tried to analyze and match all those languages to find matches?”

Tendo waved him off with a snort.

     “Metatron was just a prototype and Verbal actually had the occasional success story. Why you so dead set against this? You afraid you’re finally gonna find somebody that speaks your language?”            

     “Yeah. Or maybe someone whose language shares a few minor similarities...I’m not gonna jump into the bed of the first person whose root dialect sounds nice. I’d like something a bit more substantial.”

Tendo finished the last of his sandwich and licked at his fingertips to get rid of the remaining crumbs and mayo specks.

      “You got your fill of wild college flings huh? You know I think it’s especially ironic you’re being so shy about sharing your language after what you told me about your old band. Shoving Core Lingua into your lyrics? Real discreet brother.”

Newt felt his face flush red. He climbed the three concrete steps to his raised work area and surveyed the sloppily dissected remains of a recently killed Cat -2 Kaiju.

      “Shut up. Everybody does stupid shit in college.”

Newt hadn’t been in Anchorage long. After his brief time at the Academy he had barely had time to acclimate to life in the LA Shatterdome before being sent straight to Alaska. He had met LOCCENT tech Tendo Choi, a California native, in Los Angeles. They had been transferred together and thank god for that. It was good to have a friend in the frigid maze of concrete and hazard lights. 

     “Also, I made damn sure that nary a single demo tape remains of those bygone days Officer Choi. Any sticky drunk mistakes I might have made will remain firmly in the past where they belong.”

Tendo laughed and swiveled his office chair in a slow circle as he adjusted his bowtie.

     “You’re no shrinking violet, Dr. Geiszler. I can easily picture you speaking Core in the heat of multiple moments. Back of a limo at prom, sloppy make-out at a college mixer...a mundane science summit right after a saucy lecture about mitochondria.”

 Rolling back and forth in the chair Tendo’s eyes tracked the overhead lights. He sighed dreamily.

     “I remember back when I first started working the ferry in Frisco. There was this girl who used to ride it every day during her lunch hour. She had hair that was so black it had a blue sheen. You know what I mean?”

Newt pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and tested his headlamp. He shrugged absently pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

     “Mmhmm…blue hair. Got ya.”

     “Blue-black…but to make a long story short I had a really sweet fling with her and after only a week I learned eight phrases of her family language and…”

Tendo leaned back in his chair wiggling his eyebrows.

     “Three words of her Core Lingua.”

Newt drew back a thick slab of skin and sub-dermal tissue on his sample making a mental note of the shrapnel abrasions that puckered its swollen surface. He raised a scalpel and an eyebrow at Tendo.

     “Well obviously you didn’t understand what those words meant or I would definitely see a ring on that finger.”           

Tendo gave a wistful sigh and muttered something in his family language as he continued to examine the low ceiling of Newt’s little laboratory. His family language had roots in multiple world tongues. There was a hint of Beijing Mandarin and some Regional Peruvian Spanish sprinkled over a fine base of multi-generation Choi.          

     “Sadly, Newt, she was not even a ten percent compatible case. I would have overlooked it if she and I had a shared word between us but alas…it was not to be.”

Newt grunted and poked at what he first thought was a Kaiju sweat gland. Upon closer examination he shot-down this theory. It seemed highly unlikely that a Kaiju would be able to sweat; they were borderline amphibian.

     “Love and language aren’t really high up on my priority list dude. We got bigger problems. Really super big problems, several stories high in fact.”

Tendo stood and stretched luxuriously. He threw away the remains of lunch and examined his empty coffee mug forlornly.

     “I expected an ex-lead guitarist to be a bit more romantic. You’re more mortician then musician I…”

The tech paused and turned his head cocking an ear to the far side of the lab. There was a faint, rhythmic thrum of noise on the other side of the concrete wall.             

     “Man, you weren’t joking about your neighbor. He really does crank up the music.”

     “He plays the weirdest shit too. I don’t think he knows there were singers after Perry Como. Better not tell him he might blast me with something that was recorded post World War Two.”

Tendo chuckled and walked to the offending wall. He leaned in close, a hand cupped around his ear.

     “You talk to him yet? I don’t know much except that he’s some kind of theoretical math genius.”

Newt prodded the maybe-sweat gland, enraptured by the way its dull coloration flickered when he applied pressure.

     “I know his last name is Gottlieb, his first name begins with H and that he’s a grade-A dick.”

The only thing in the world that could have torn Newt’s attention away from his monster corpse was juicy gossip about his asshole neighbor. The ghost next door was worth just as much study as Kaiju gross anatomy.

Newt had only caught glimpses of the man; a shape entering a doorway, a shadow exiting the end of the hall. He had a strange pattern to his footsteps. There was an extra sound that wasn’t caused by his heels striking the cement and Newt couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Gottlieb had been here when Newt had moved in a month previous but the only sign of his existence besides the hallway haunting and the big band music were the notes taped to Newt’s laboratory door.

Newt had never known that handwriting could scowl until he found the first note. It had read. “I have found remnants of Blue in the hallway for the third time this week. Please make an effort to clean your shoes before stepping outside in future.” It was signed by the mysterious Dr. H Gottlieb.  Newt hadn’t made an effort to clean his feet after. If anything he made them nasty on purpose, an experiment to see if more notes would show up- and show up they did.

An entire drawer of Newt’s writing desk was now dedicated to H. Gottlieb notes. They covered a wide gamut of grievances. Everything from phantom smells to (ironically) loud noises. Sometimes Newt would blast metal just to piss H. Gottlieb off. The notes became his reward for bad behavior.

Tendo beamed the glow of Shatterdome scandal alight in his eyes. He lowered his voice conspiratorially and jerked a thumb back at the shared wall.

     “Man. I didn’t put two and two together, but when you said Gottlieb It just hit me. He must be ole Lars Gottlieb’s kid.”

The maybe-sweat gland jiggled ominously and Newt decided it would be a good idea to disinfect it again before he opened it. He was beginning to suspect it was some kind of tumor. It wouldn’t be the first he had found. Kaiju seemed to be riddled with benign masses of cells that hadn’t formed with any specific function in mind. Newt made a disgusted snort that wasn’t aimed at the glutinous mass but at the sound of Lars Gottleib’s name.

     “I’m working that close to the blood-kin of king douche-bag himself? Fuck Tendo. No wonder he’s such a dick. It must be hereditary.”

Tendo attempted to suppress a chuckle.

     “I bet their family language is just a collection of fart noises. “

     “Son. Come closer…listen to our proud family heritage…PFFFFFFFFBBBbbll.”

Lars Gottlieb wasn’t new on the PPDC scene. He had been the liaison from the European banking union at first. The guy who set up budgets and sat godlike over the teeny trickles of funding that flowed into each department. He was a tight-fisted hard-ass when it came to the K-sci department and Newt wondered if he was a bit more giving to Jaeger tech. If his son was a math guy he was no doubt a J-tech nerd, probably lining his department’s pockets with his dads blessing. Ugh.

There had even been rumors of some new project in the works that was outside PPDC authority but Newt was skeptical. The world might hate all the cash it was siphoning into the Defense Corps but…right now? It was the only show in town.

Tendo and Newt’s increasingly exaggerated flatulence talk was interrupted by a heavy thump and what sounded suspiciously like a human scream.

 Newt froze wide-eyed, the bang had come from next door and the familiar muted music came to a sudden screeching halt. After a second or so an eerie repetitive scratching noise was the only sound on the other side of the shared wall. Tendo was still standing near the wall and pressed his ear against it frowning. He looked back at Newt and shrugged.

     “I…I think something bad just happened.”

     “Like what, dude?”

Tendo jogged towards the lab door and Newt was already taking off his Blue-stained gloves before his friend could reply.

     “Let’s find out.”

Newt knocked on the huge metal door with a balled up fist and waited for an answer. There was nothing. Tendo tried with both hands, pounding flat palms against the cold riveted surface. The Shatterdome was only five years old but the harsh Anchorage weather aged everything before its time.

     “Newt…maybe we just heard-“

Newt reached for the handle and turned it cautiously to see if it was locked. It wasn’t and he waggled his eyebrows at Tendo, cackling as he yanked the door open. His mother had told him once that he had retained her worst qualities: A lack of patience and a surplus of curiosity. Now that he had a legit opportunity to look in on the mysterious world of H. Gottlieb he was doing to take it. The door creaked threateningly; folding back to reveal a scene that Newt didn’t quite comprehend at first.

First thing he noticed was the source of the weird scratchy bumping noise. It was an ancient upright record player turned on its side. It was still running and its record had been knocked askew as it fell. The needle scuffed the hard plastic surface over and over again as it rotated fruitlessly letting out a puff of music so brief it sounded like a bump. Tendo would have no place to complain about Newt dragging his old piano everywhere from now on. Not when this guy had an honest to god antique upright record player.

The second thing Newt noticed was the guy who owned the antique upright record player.

Dr. H Gottlieb lay on the floor making horrible guttural gasping noises. He was on his side his face pressed to the ground, his body curled into a horseshoe shape with both arms wrapped tight around his abdomen. Newt ran to him sliding down to his knees on the cold concrete so fast a clatter of pain went up through his kneecaps and made his teeth bang together. His hands hovered around the man for moment completely unsure where to touch him.  Tendo held back in the doorway his face draining of color.

     “Shit- shit!…Newt! I’m going to get the infirmary runners. You stay here and do what you can to help...”

Newt snapped around ready with a stressed and sarcastic one-liner but Tendo was already gone. He turned his attention to the mess on the floor and whined in the back of his throat. Newt glanced around Gottlieb’s workspace anxiously, his eyes darting around as he tried to take it all in, gather some clue about what had happened.

             The room was a small concrete square, almost identical to his own laboratory. The raised dais where Newt kept his dissection table was devoted to a complex computer setup while every other inch of space was occupied by sprawling blackboards. Each of these was covered top to baseboard with miles of squiggly white numbers.  Newt noted the wheeled ladder leaned precariously on the nearest blackboard and he kicked backwards, tapping it with a boot.

     “Hey…did you fall? Did you fall off that ladder?”

             The man who was probably H. Gottlieb had yet to say anything. He reached a thin long-fingered hand outwards grasping at a stub of chalk that had apparently rolled away from him. Newt gaped at Gottlieb eyebrow raised, relieved that he was doing something. His silence was getting painfully disconcerting and made Newt feel even more on edge. His voice was shrill and louder then he expected when he spoke again.He

     “Answer me dude! Did you fall off the ladder? L-A-D-D-E-R, is something broken? Are you hurt bad? “

The pale spidery hand grasped the chalk tightly and Gottlieb met Newt’s gaze. He was sweating, possibly feverish, his dark hair stuck wetly to his creased forehead. His skin was waxy and he had the pointiest cheekbones Newt had ever seen. Dark glazed eyes looked up at him from beneath long dark eyelashes. He was…striking.

That was another one of Newt’s mom’s words; she had a gift for them in any language. Striking people weren’t necessarily beautiful in the traditional sense. Striking people left an impression on you and got stuck in your head like a bad ad jingle. With his too-wide mouth and his slanting jaw Dr. H Gottlieb planted himself smack dab into striking territory.

Gottlieb pressed his chalk to the hard concrete floor and wrote-

              Pain in abdomen.

Newt watched the words form his hand resting on Gottlieb’s shoulder. Was the guy mute? The thought made his stomach wrench unpleasantly. Not being able to speak wasn’t insurmountable when it came to language. Core and family language were normally only spoken and not written but there was always sign language…but this didn’t seem right. He had heard the guy make a groaning noise and he was almost a hundred percent sure he had heard him scream when he fell. Maybe he was deaf? Why wasn’t he at least attempting to sign?

The chalk stopped scratching against the ground and Gottlieb collapsed into a panting feverish heap. He was biting his lower lip seemingly doing everything in his power not to scream. The words he had written on the floor were scarcely legible and Newt read them multiple times in confusion.

             Pain in abdomen. If I die please get statistics to Dr. Kona

Under this message Gottlieb had written a long string of numbers which was probably a continuation of the ones on the chalkboard above them. Newt’s temper flared up instantly. What kind of selfless bony asshole could make him feel so angry without saying a single word.

     “What the fuck dude! That’s not helpful! Can you turn over? What’s the pain feel like? Is it just in your gut? Can you talk or what?”

Newt looked up at the door and back then slid a gentle hand down to rest where Gottlieb was clutching his torso. It was hard to tell if the skin was hot or distended because of the literal pile of shirts and sweaters the skinny scientist was wearing.

     “Here? Is it…”

Gottlieb let out gasp of pain when Newt applied pressure. He jammed the top of his hand into his mouth biting down hard on his knuckles to suppress another scream. Newt blinked at him baffled and guilty.

     “Hey- hey…its ok. Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have done that. You just hold tight a bit longer. My buddy ran to get help ok? Infirmary people will be here any minute.”

It was clear he wasn’t going to get a word out of the mathematician. Gottlieb took labored half-breaths and Newt felt a sharp pang of empathy. He reached over to clumsily rub the man’s shoulder in a way he hoped was soothing. Muttering bits of his family language in thought Newt let his gaze travel from the hurt area to Gottlieb’s pained expression. Blood was dripping from his knuckle and Newt winced reaching out to pull it away.

     “Don’t hurt yourself like that Dr... Ha-you know what? I don’t know your full name.”

They stared at each other Newt hardly daring to blink. Finally, after another protracted silence Gottlieb reached out and grasped his chalk nub. He scribbled his name under the earlier indecipherable assortment of numbers.

             Dr. Hermann Gottlieb

Hermann dropped the chalk and his breathing hitched as he experiencing another wave of pain. Newt gripped his arm and leaned closer watching him intently. He slipped off his jacket and folded it into a puffy square of cloth and leather slipping it under Hermann’s head so he wasn’t lying right on the hard cement.       

     “Hermann? How about Herms? Or I could just be like…hey Mann! But with two n’s.”

Gottlieb glared at him with a raised eyebrow and Newt couldn’t help but laugh; that expression was a language into itself; pure poetry. He stopped struck by sudden inspiration…inspiration and a vague memory of abdominal pain he had felt in college. It had been so bad he had thought he was going to die.

     “Hey Herms…you ever had your appendix out?”

   The summer day was so warm Hermann felt sure that the sun was closer to the earth then it ever had been. This was false of course. The sun wasn’t moving from its fixed point and his side of the earth was close but not any closer then any other summer day in Germany.

Hermann startled a fat rabbit from a patch of fragrant clover and watched it bolt under a hedge and into the field beyond. Picking a sprig of honeysuckle flowers entwined around an old stone fence he ambled towards his mother. She looked content in her fold out chair under her white umbrella, dozing with a soft smile on frail features. Her eyes opened when Hermann placed the honeysuckle carefully on her lap between her folded hands.
            “Thank you Hermann. These are lovely…”

She beamed at him from under the wide brim of her sunhat, dark curls of auburn hair falling into her face. The warm weather was good for her. The doctor had told them over and over it would be better if she moved to away from the bitter Garmisch-Partenkirchen winters. Hermann’s father had blithely ignored these suggestions. Just thinking of it made the familiar red hot anger curl in Hermann’s stomach like a venomous snake.

His mother gazed out into the distance, towards the darkened patches of woodland bordering the azure scrap of a small stream. At the edge of the pasture Karla and Dietrich were swimming in a tranquil, sun-warmed pond. Hermann had declined to join them; he liked keeping his mother company. He just felt better knowing she wasn’t alone. Hermann knew in his very mature nine-year-old way that she wasn’t going to disappear when he wasn’t looking but… sometimes it felt like- If he just kept careful watch over her the remission would last - maybe forever.

     “Mmm…Liebling. Have I ever told you the story of the princess whose brothers were swans?”

Hermann settled on the fleece blanket next to his mother’s chair and grabbed idly at the long stems of nearby grass, braiding them together deliberately while he listened. His mother didn’t tell him stories as often as she had when he was younger. His siblings called them nonsense stories and insisted they were for babies. Hermann didn’t think so but, like on many other subjects, he kept his opinions to himself. He tried not to sound too eager when he answered.

     “No. I haven’t heard that one. You could tell it…er- if you wanted.”

A bee landed on Hermann’s bare knee and he watched it wide-eyed hardly daring to breathe. The soft feet tickled his skin and its droning voice merged with his mothers as she switched into the family language to start her story.

     “[Once there was a princess with seven brothers. After the death of their mother their father the king had remarried to a woman who was cruel as she was beautiful. She was secretly a witch and had decided from the beginning she would rid herself of the children the moment she was crowned queen.]”

Hermann followed the bee’s progress as it flit off his knee, buzzing in haphazard circles towards the nearest patch of wildflowers.      

     “Why are they always evil? ...the stepmothers?”

     “Mmm…I think it’s because they represent the unknown. They represent change. In old tales certain characters are usually just stand-ins, symbols for something bigger than themselves.”

Hermann leaned his back against his mothers chair and nodded as he went back to braiding his grass. He stuck a piece in his mouth worrying it with his teeth. He liked it when his mother explained things honestly. She didn’t talk down to him or lie like his father, his nanny or the tutors did. Her candid nature was one of the things he loved most about her.

     ["One morning just as the sun began to rise the witch-queen came into the prince’s bedroom. Laying a hand on each brother she said a word that turned them all into elegant white swans. The brothers fluttered about in panic and flew out an open window into the pale white dawn. Their sister heard the noise and ran to their room just in time to witness her brother’s transformation. She fled the castle in tears chasing after her brothers barefoot and in her nightdress. She did not look back and she would never return to her father’s kingdom again.]”

Hermann reached for a handful of pale yellow wildflowers. He began to work them meticulously into his grass crown. There was a distant, delighted squeal as Karla hit Dietrich with a well aimed water balloon. Hermann’s mother watched them and smiled as she continued.     

     [“Night fell and the princess lay exhausted by the shores of a great lake. As she wept bitterly she was approached by a small silver fish who told her that her brothers were near and while they were swans during the day they would become human at night. The fish told her that the only way to break the spell was to weave seven shirts of harsh stinging nettles. She would make one for each brother and all the while she could not speak a word. She would have to take a Vow of Silence until her task was complete.”]

Hermann giggled shaking his head. He slipped into the Gottlieb language without thinking, biting his lip as he held the laughter in.

     [“How did the fish know all that?”]

His mother grinned at him and reached out to flick his nose with the end of her fingernail.

     [“It was a very smart fish, possibly a good fairy in disguise.”]

Hermann rubbed his nose and scowled.

     “There’s always a good fairy in disguise.”

    “And isn’t that a nice thing to think about?”

She leaned over her chair and took a handful of grass in hand weaving it with deft pale fingers as she started on her own grass circlet.  

    [“So the princess found her brothers and took the Vow of Silence and knew that she was giving up much so she could help those she loved. The nettles stung her hands and burned her skin but she didn’t cry out. She harvested the plants and sewed the shirts until one day a young prince who happened to be riding by saw her. Enchanted by her loveliness he took her back to his castle and dressed her in the finest clothes. She was polite but said nothing and continued to pick her nettles from a nearby graveyard to sew her shirts.”]

Hermann finished his crown and looked around to make sure his siblings were distracted before he put it on with a small smile of satisfaction. His mother paused from her own weaving to adjust it pushing his dark hair from his forehead with a practiced hand.

     “Mutter, why is it such a big deal that she stopped talking?”

Passing his mother a handful of the yellow wildflowers Hermann watched as she sorted them by size. Starting with the smallest she soon had an expertly organized line across her lap.

     “Well, love. A Vow of Silence isn’t the same thing as not talking. You don’t speak a Regional language yes but a vow means you no longer speak your family language. If you don’t have that you don’t really have a family…not in how others view you. You don’t speak your Core which means even if you hear your Argot speak something only the two of you understand…you cannot answer.”

Hermann knew about Argots mostly because Karla talked about them nonstop. He had a really vague idea that they were important and he knew that they were someone who you shared your entire Core language with but the fine lovey details didn’t really interest him enough for further inquiry. Hermann furrowed his brow and decided ask the bigger Un-Argot related question.

     “Are Vows real things? Like…real things people do?”

     “Yes. Very real things.”

     “Oh.”

That was all Hermann could really think to say. He desperately wanted to ask if they could still write things down if they made a Vow but held back. He needed to know what happened to the brave princess first.  His mother examined her crown skeptically gesturing for Hermann to hand her more grass as she continued.

     [“After a time the King’s eldest advisor began to fear the silent girl and her nettle shirts. A person without language cannot be trusted. How can they? They have no Core….no being. The advisor whispered ill rumors to the King and against the princes protests the princess was set to be executed by fire, burned in the village square as a witch…”]

     “That’s not fair!”

Hermann’s crown fell forward over his face and he shoved it back angrily. Over their heads a bird gave a startled cry and twittered, berating Hermann for his outburst before it took flight over the field. His mother’s expression darkened subtly and she twisted a long blade of grass around one finger.

     “When you play a game with Dietrich and Karla do they always play fair?”

Hermann turned towards the pond and scowled as his older brother shoved a big handful of gooey mud down the backside of Karla’s swimsuit. She wailed as it dripped down her legs and grabbed for Dietrich’s shoulders, doing her best to dunk his head under the water near a cluster of soggy cattails. Hermann’s reply was grumpy and flat.

     “No.”

A breeze tugged playfully at the edges of their umbrella and his mother grinned following his gaze.

      “Sometimes life and the people you meet in life aren’t fair. When that happens we push through. Just like the princess and her brothers.”

A cloud drifted in front of the sun blocking it out for a moment and sending the entire meadow into darkness. The grass rustled and the small animals living in it seemed to scatter all at once. His mother selected the smallest of her yellow flowers and wove it into the edge of her crown. She slipped comfortably back in the family language to finish her story.              

     [“So-Even as the princess was wheeled to the burning pyre at the center of town her brothers flew her nettles in their golden beaks.  The villagers cried out in fear when they saw this but fortunately just as the priest read her last rites she finished the shirts and threw them into the air over her brothers turning the snowy white swans into smiling young men. The prince ran forward proclaiming his love in his Core language. She answered in kind and as she did the flames growing around her turned to flowers.”]

With a grand flourish Hermann’s mother pushed the last flower into her crown and turned it over in her hands for a dubious once-over. With a satisfied nod she whisked Hermann’s crown from his head and placing the one she had made in its place. Reaching up she drew her sunhat down over her knees and crowned herself with Hermann’s messy crown in one fluid motion.

     [“And so the princess knew the prince was her Argot and she took his family language and they were married that very day. Her only regret was that she had broken her vow a little too soon and had missed a stitch on the sleeve of her youngest brother’s shirt. For the rest of his days he had one arm and one white wing. But this aside they all lived happily ever after.”]

Hermann pushed himself shakily to his feet and flung his arms around his Mother’s neck. He grinned and spoke in the family language.

     [“I hope it wasn’t he writing hand.”]

She laughed and the sound carried out over the summer air. 

     “He’ll make do. He went off and had his own adventures. But that’s another story completely and now I think I am ready for the story of lunch how about you?”

Hermann nodded dusting grass from his lap as his Mother found her feet calling out to the Dietrich and Karla. Hermann’s sister galloped towards them completely soaked and mud-spattered her brother hot on her heels. They crested the small hillock at the end of the pasture racing to see who would make it to the blanket and umbrella first. Another larger cloud drifted ominously overhead blotting out the sunshine and Hermann’s mother squinted up at it with pursed lips. Her crown slipped off but she didn’t notice distracted by a dark bank of clouds that had ostensibly appeared from nowhere.

         “[Let’s go Love…it looks like rain.]”

Newt had been surprised by the vibrant color of New Zealand’s beaches. His only experience with the country before the war had been multiple viewings of all the Lord of the Rings movies and Frodo didn’t spend a lot of time sunbathing on the coast. Tokomaru Bay was a pristine stretch of green hills, white sand and blue water; a painfully beautiful ribbon of foam and sand dunes. Newt felt guilty that soon it was all going to be disturbed by construction teams and heavy machinery.

He had been invited, along with a gaggle of other top ranking science and military officials, to assess Tokomaru and judge if it was a safe site for New Zealand’s first Shatterdome. The bay had been deemed a good fit immediately and the ground breaking ceremony would take place within the week. While he didn’t really understand why his opinion mattered Newt had been coerced to be part of the first survey team.

All he had to do was give his thoughts about Tokomaru’s Kaiju defensibility and they had promised him some cat-2 remains that had washed up on shore close to the proposed building site. While the salvaged tooth and partial optic nerve had been kind of a letdown, New Zealand’s views did not disappoint.

Walking down a long stretch of path Newt watched engineers and military personnel milling about orange stakes planted around the future building site. Each of them pointing purposefully at the nearby hills and planning the demise of unassuming trees and innocent wildflowers. The tiny community Tokomaru Bay sat on the edge of the geographic landmark from which it took its name and had a population of barely 500 people; most of them native Maori. Newt had no doubt that some of them would end up in the Ranger program, they seemed insanely proud to have a Shatterdome here instead of some bigger city like Gisborne or Napier.

Newt turned away from the suits and ties annoyed at their constant congratulatory back patting. This wasn’t his scene and despite the stunning landscape he looked forward to getting back to the Tokyo dome to get some real work done. His thoughts turned distractedly to the Kaiju Amikiri cooling its half-dissected heels in his specimen freezer. In the huge cat-3’s abdomen he had found a new organ that deserved a second look.

Newt was almost one thousand percent sure that he had found the Kaiju equivalent of a thyroid gland. But…glands aside, there had also been rumors that Tokyo’s theoretical physicists had some scientists joining them from other domes; including Los Angeles. Hermann had been stationed in Los Angeles for four months.

Newt reached down to take off his shoes and socks and felt heat rise in his face, grazing his cheeks. Hermann Gottlieb hadn’t answered his e-mails at first; after their…unfortunate first encounter in Anchorage Newt hadn’t been able to get the man off his mind. After weeks of persistent prodding, Hermann had finally conceded to communicating in e-mail despite the two of them being literal next door neighbors. Their discussions were glorious, heated and passionate. Theories about the Breach, about the Kaiju’s origins and eventually more important topics like which was the best original Star Trek episode.

When Newt insisted they spend time together physically Hermann had been different- colder. Real world face-time was restricted to stony, silent shared meals and awkward lab visits with no eye contact. Hermann did not speak. Newt knew that physically he could talk but he simply chose not to. It was madness. The world ran on words and language. Even the deaf and mute had the rich complexity of sign language. Yet for some reason Hermann-goddamn-Gottlieb had sworn off talking and there was a persistent rumor he had done the unthinkable. The stoic and stodgy young mathematician had taken a Vow of Silence.

Newt looked out over the ocean and shuddered. If this was true Hermann never discussed his self-imposed exile in any of their novel length e-mail correspondences and Newt never pushed it. When he tried it came to nothing. A change of subject or no reply in his inbox at all. Tendo Choi and other reputable Shatterdome sources had no explanation and if the higher-ups knew something they weren’t sharing the sordid details.

Anchorage had been two years and two transfers ago. Gottlieb had been reassigned first. He had gone on to Los Angeles while Newt had eventually been transferred to Tokyo. Thank god their e-mails didn’t slow- if anything the distance only made them intensify. Sometimes Newt would get as many as eight Hermann e-mails a day and that should he been enough but it wasn’t-It was never enough.

Hermann’s silence was deafening, and Newt spent criminal amounts of time thinking about what his voice sounded like. He wanted to hear him speaking Regional or family language…maybe even a few words of something deeper. The warm flush crept up the back of Newt’s neck and he stood at the very edge of the waterline letting the ocean sweep at his toes. At least they could talk with written words - at least…

     “No. I didn’t get any of that. It’s all gibberish!”

Newt startled and looked around guiltily hoping no one close by was able to detect dirty thoughts. Just a little ways up the beach there was a massive weather-worn rock formation. The voice he had heard was hidden from view on the opposite side of the stones.

Newt leaned carefully on a convenient rock ledge to slip his shoes back on then scaled the structure until he was on the top. Flopping down onto his belly Newt pulled himself to the opposite side of the flat rock using elbows and knees. He peeked over the edge and found himself in the midst of a blistering discussion between two kids just sitting on the cusp of teenager-dom.

It was hard to tell from his birds-eye view but Newt was sure that one of the kids was Marshall Pentecost’s adopted daughter Mako Mori. He had basically been one of her honorary uncles since their first introduction in Anchorage. She had been a tiny thing then and spent most of her free time sitting in Hermann’s lab studying Regional languages and basic physics. Newt grinned wide; Pentecost must have come out for the Shatterdome survey and brought her along.

The other kid he didn’t recognize at first. He looked familiar, his gingery red-blonde hair catching the muted mid-day light. He had a frustrated air about him and Newt realized it was his heavily-accented voice he had heard. He had a twang that didn’t sound local-an Australian dialect if he was forced to guess. While most people studied a minimum of five languages- their own family language included, Newt had slacked and knew only four. His Regional language when he was at home was a Bostonian-American vernacular. He was fluent in Geiszler, adequate in basic Tokyo Japanese and pretty good with Berliner German. His Uncle Gunter had been fluent in multiple German Regionals and his dad knew even more.

Newt was preparing to shriek boo or something stupid to startle them but he held his tongue curious. It felt like he had accidently fallen into something secret. The Australian kid leaned towards Mako and rubbed at the back of his neck uncomfortably.

     “Just…try it one more time ok? No clues!’”

Mako took a deep breath her soft reply a garbled mess of butterfly syllables. Newt was confused by the word salad for a moment then it suddenly struck him what he was witnessing. She was giving the kid some words of her Core Lingua. The kids were experimenting.

Newt debated if he should just let them be. He had pulled similar shenanigans when he was a teenager. But on the other hand? -He had no idea what they were saying and if Pentecost found out Newt had left his daughter out here to possibly start necking with the Aussie kid he would have Newt demoted to test-tube cleaner or something. Being on the Marshall’s bad side was the last thing Newt wanted. The Australian boy shook his head and gave a disappointed sigh.

     “Still nothing, Mako. Sounds like a lot of nonsense. I didn’t get anything. What did you sa- “

Newt cleared his throat loudly and watched the kids jump to their feet like the sound had electrocuted them.

     “Hello, hello, hello… What’s all this then?”

The boy glanced upwards and the blush on his cheeks was so intense Newt could practically feel the heat pouring off of him. Mako was just the opposite, her face chalk pale. She kept her eyes to the ground clenching and unclenching her fists. They both started talking at once, struggling to be heard over one another, the words pouring out in a babbling torrent of unconvincing nonchalance.

     “Oh…Dr. Geiszler…I didn’t know you would be here-I”

     “What the hell’s your problem? Spying on us like a god damn perv…”             

     “We were…just enjoying the beach. Did you come to see the building site?”        

Newt did a quick pushup and swung his legs over the side of the rocks. He kicked his feet and beamed down at them. It would be pointless to pretend he hadn’t seen what he had seen and Newt decided it was best to be up front about it.

     “So you two were testing the waters right? Seeing how compatible you were? Little verbal-make out session?”

They both looked away, embarrassed. Mako crinkled her nose unhappily and the Aussie kid looked like he was willing the ground to swallow him whole. They answered in unison and it was resoundingly in the negative.

     “No! Dr. Geiszler! Please do not joke about such things…we are friends.”

     “That’s not what’s going on! She’s like my sister!”

Newt nodded pursing his lips.

     “So…what exactly were you doing?”

The boy jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. It had taken Newt a minute to place him but once he got a better view of the boys face he was finally able to give it a name. Chuck Hansen, son of the renowned Ranger Hercules Hansen. Herc and his brother Scott used their familial language connection to pilot the Lucky Seven. Seven was an antique Mach-1 Jaeger whose Core-operating system Hermann complained about endlessly in e-mails.  Stacker Pentecost was a friend of Ranger Hansen’s so it was no surprise their kids were close. Army brats had to stick together. Mako gave a heavy sigh and brushed windswept pink highlights from her eyes.

     “I had…I felt some words…I just wanted to try- Chuck has some of his own and we…weren’t sure.”

Chuck had squared his small shoulders like he was ready for a fight and Newt held up his hands disarmingly.

     “It’s not a big deal you guys. If you wanna practice this stuff it might as well be with somebody you know. Speaking in Core to a mirror isn’t the same as letting a real person hear it. ”

The kids stared blankly at their feet; the sounds of seagulls and pounding waves filled the semi-truck sized silence. Newt hummed in thought.

     “You two know how this works right? Like, Core language is a super personal thing. Er, your parents have talked to you about it before…right?”

Mako and Chuck glanced sidelong at one another and back at him at a loss. Mako finally shrugged as she answered.

     “We know some. I know what I have seen on television and read in my books. Dr. Geiszler. I-Is it a bad thing we did? Are we in trouble? I just heard new words in my head and Chuck had too. We were excited but we didn’t-we didn’t want to bother Sensei or Ranger Hansen so we- decided to compare our languages...”

     A little shock went up Newt’s spine as realization set in. He was going to have to be the adult in this situation. He was talking to two kids who had spent so much time dome-hopping they had probably never been given a proper “Core talk.” Trash TV and Teen lit wasn’t the most reliable source. Newt was not the one who should have to do this but-what the hell.

     “How old are you guys? Twelve? Thirteen?”

Chuck kicked moodily at a rock and sent it skittering across the sand.

      “I’ll be thirteen in a month. Mako’s little bit older than me…only by a couple months though.”

 Newt made a long groaning noise in the back of his throat, throwing his head back and rolling his shoulders. The grey-overcast sky held no inspiration, no advice on how to broach this delicately.

     “Okay. How much do you guys know about the three languages?”

It took everything Newt had to stifle a laugh when Mako raised her hand and waved it eagerly. She was all ready to answer his question like he was a Shatterdome tutor. Newt pointed at her eyebrows rising over his glasses. He had been a professor for several years at MIT before the war so it wasn’t like he was a complete stranger to teaching.

     “There are three classes of language Dr. Geiszler. The Regional or Base language; the family language, and the Core Lingua or Core language. “

Newt hopped down from the top of the damp rocks and wiped at the seat of his pants. He regretted the decision right away when he realized Chuck Hansen was roughly the same height as him. It took away a substantial chunk of the authority he felt. 

     “Mr. Hansen. Can you define the classes for me?”

Chuck looked ready to argue but begrudgingly answered, crossing his arms over his skinny chest.

     “Right, um- Regional is the language of the place you’re born. The one you grow up in. There are lots of those and a lot of ‘em are related. Like- mine and dads is Westie Sydney which ain’t quite like Sydney proper but real close. Family’s a language that’s passed down. Only people in a family can speak it and they pass it on to their kids. Er-Core’s your own language and you don’t start knowing it till you’re older. Nobody can speak it but you.”

Newt waggled his hand back and forth mouth skewed to the side as he considered Chuck’s answer.

     “Not bad. I mean you got the basics down. I’m gonna give you a scooch more info Okay? But if your giant terrifying fathers ask where you learned it, it was somebody else- capisce?”

The kids both nodded conspiratorially moving closer to Newt, ready do drink in every word.

     “So, there are Regional languages right? It’s normal for everybody to know around three. Historically all of those started from family languages that combined over a certain area and melted into each other. Regional dialects evolve from Regional family dialects. But, you may ask, where do family languages come from?”

Newt started to walk on down the beach enjoying the feeling of the wind in his hair. He hadn’t put gel in it today. He wouldn’t be able to afford hair product soon with all the strict rationing. He was experimenting with ways to make his own using basic lubricants like Vaseline but it had yielded… mixed results.

Mako and Chuck fell in line behind him like ducklings. Mori answered but her voice as so hushed she could barely be heard over the breaking waves. Chuck repeated what she said so loudly there was no way it could be missed.

     “Er-…Is it Core Lingua?”

     “That’s right! Ten points to Gryffindor.”

Newt hopped onto a bit of bleached driftwood and put his arms out as he walked the length of it barely keeping his balance as he did.

     “So starting waaay back to the dark ages or so, there had to be a Linguistical Patriarch- you know an original Geiszler. My great-great-great-god knows how many greats- grandpa. His Core Lingua was what started our language and it’s been passed down through all the sons since him.”

Mako hopped down from the driftwood and ran ahead of Newt her forehead creased in concern. She always looked way to serious for a kid her age, too severe. Newt couldn’t blame her for that even if it hurt his heart sometimes. She had been through too damn much…Chuck too. He wanted to buy them each an ice cream cone and set them loose in the pre-war version of Disneyland.

     “Dr. Geiszler what about my family language? I am the last in my bloodline and I am a girl. Can I not take the legacy on? What about the Marshall? He has shared his family language with me as well…is it wrong to know two family tongues?”             

Newt raised a hand quickly, trying to quell her fears before they started. He could practically feel the angry lasers shooting from Chuck’s eyes through his jacket and into his back.

     “Whoa! Okay, there’s a lot to break down here…So like, when two folks got married in ye olden days the lady would lose her father’s language and take her husbands…BUT she got a thing called a dowry. Most dowries were like…twenty or so of her favorite words or some of its syntax right? Those elements would get combined into her husband’s family language and form something that was a bit different. Gave them a fresh start and kept the old language going. That’s the traditional way to go and sometimes real old-fashioned people do that still? But, things have changed over the last century. You could combine the Mori language with Pentecost’s if you wanted…or you could just have both. A lot of people do that when they marry.”

A storm was blowing their direction. The balmy, humid wind was taking on a distinct smell of salt and electricity. The seagull’s restless calls, which had been frequent most of the morning, were ebbing into an eerie stillness. Newt looked from Chuck to Mako and decided it might be best to start heading back to base. There was an hourly shuttle that ferried surveyors and scientists to and from the beach to their hotel a few miles away. The kids were probably staying there too.

 He slipped off the driftwood and sauntered nonchalantly towards the building site, taking his sweet time as he observed stray bits of seaweed or broken shell. His lecture continued on un-interrupted.

     “Maks, you are free to do whatever you want. You can have two family languages. I know my dad and uncles super well but I also know a bit of moms. Not much but…a little. She never wanted to combine. “

Chuck leaned down and picked up a round, smooth pebble winging it as far out as he could over the tide. He scowled at Newt huffily.

     “So get on then! Tell us about the Core stuff!”

     “Ooooh, you want to get to the sexy stuff huh kiddo? The forbidden fruits?”

Chuck was reaching for another stone coldly, his cheeks going from pink to red. Mako spoke to him in curt Japanese. Newt’s Japanese wasn’t the best but he gathered from her scolding tone she was warning him to behave. That was Chuck’s life in a nutshell as far as Newt could tell; one long string of people telling him to behave. He could more than relate to that.

     “So, you get your Core language around …well-your ages. ‘Bout puberty. You start to hear words and syllables in your head but they aren’t something you can define with written characters. Thousands of years ago the most base of base Core Lingua got printed translations but we rarely do that now. Speaking words you feel inside is-“

Newt hesitated and ran his tongue over his teeth. Maybe he wasn’t the guy to do this. Despite being a tragically sentimental and gooey person he was still a scientist and talking about this kind of thing without breaking down the possible evolutionary reasons for its existence was a challenge.

     “When you speak your inner language…you feel the words more than you say them. They feel like pure emotions spilling out of you because they’re like little buttons connected directly to your brain. The right word in Core can trigger anything from adrenaline to dopamine; that’s why sharing them is so private. Something you share with close family and umm…romantic partners. “

Mako crouched in the sand and drew something with a bit of driftwood she had salvaged as a walking-stick. It looked like a giant cartoony crab with fierce narrowed eyes and sharp teeth. She stabbed the end of the stick deep into the crab’s chest as she spoke her thoughts out loud.

     “They sound like magic words.”

Newt admired her drawing and shivered against a fresh gust of wind.

     “I believe that “Magic” is a dirty word kiddo.  Core is more chemistry than magic. It’s a messy science that’s hard to predict. Sometimes you meet somebody who has just the right neurons firing and understands maybe a percentage of your Core but not all of it; a scattering of words or a handful of phrases. But…everybody has that one person-The person who gets all of it, every word. That’s your Argot you’re…Er.”

Newt flapped his hands around trying to avoid overly sentimental lingo but finding it unworkable. Chuck cut in, his puberty soaked voice cracking from the effort.

     “Your soulmate?”

     “Sure, Chuck-a-roo. That’s a word for it I guess. Your one and only, your counterweight- I guess you’ve heard about Argot’s before huh? “

There was cloudy embarrassment in Chuck’s face and Newt had to struggle not to put an arm around him. For an instant the kid’s defiant sadness had looked so much like Hermann’s. Hermann standing quiet at the edge of the LOCCENT deck or eating alone in the commissary; daring the world to shovel more shit his direction. Chuck grunted an answer scouring the ground for another rock to throw.

     “I don’t know much ‘bout Core but I heard soulmates make good pilots. Those Argot things must make the best pilots.”

Chuck spoke with such intensity that it made Newt a tad uncomfortable. He decided it would probably be best to change the subject. He started walking again; they were getting close to the unnatural orange painted stakes that marked the far edge of the suggested build site.

     “Well anyway…The point is that you what you were doing before? It’s not anything to be ashamed of. Just…Just make sure you are comfortable giving that much of yourself to somebody. I can speak some Core to my dad and uncle and they won’t understand it but it’s me showing that I love and trust them. Sharing Core with a friend or a stranger is different and mostly it just ends up um…sexier. Oh god does that make sense? Am I making sense? “

Mako dragged the stick she had been drawing with behind her, leaving a clear path in the sand as she went.

     “Yes. That makes sense and I trust Chuck completely. He is more than a friend. He is family.”

Chuck gaped at her and his face was twisted somewhere between pride and embarrassment.  He shook his head and scratched the back of his neck, looking to Newt with another question visibly burning a hole in his tongue

    “The world’s big right? Everybody has a Core yeah?”

Newt felt a hard drop of rain water pelt the top of his head and sped towards the construction zone with renewed vigor. He did not savor the idea of a wet leather jacket.

     “Sure is and yes they do Chuck Norris. You got a point that isn’t on top of your head?”

Chuck matched his short stride easily staring at him with something that bordered on real fear.

     “So…how do you ever find somebody who speaks your language?”

     “I… that’s a tough one, Chuckles. All I can say is that when you meet someone you want to speak Core with you just…you just know. It might be somebody who gets one half of one word but you just keep trying and get lucky. Not everybody finds their Argot but you can definitely find somebody.”

The ocean was getting rougher by the moment, the bright and cool afternoon quickly turning into a thick summer storm. Mako stopped walking and thrust her walking stick into the damp sand, her expression troubled. Newt could sense something was on her mind and he turned to look at her from the top of a small hillock.

     “What’s eating you, Mak and cheese?”     

     “Dr. Geiszler…what if the person will not speak? Will they always be alone?”

Newt’s insides froze into a solid mass and raindrops oozed down his lenses in syrupy droplets as his voice squeaked out.

     “P-People who can’t talk can use sign-lan …”

     “No! He can talk! I have heard him talk but then he just…stopped.”

Newt knew who she was talking about. He had known the moment she had uttered the words “will not speak”; not “cannot” but “will not.” Newt might have been an honorary uncle but Hermann was on another uncle level completely. Mako worshipped the ground he limped upon.  She would come to Hermann for help with schoolwork. Skype with him for hours at a time; she adored him.

     “I-I dunno Maks. Maybe they got a reason we don’t know about?”

She glared at Newt fiercely, her grip on the driftwood stick tightened until it looked like she would snap it in half from sheer force of will. Chuck fell back a step and hesitated, his hair sticking to his scalp as the downpour grew worse.  He seemed confused by the sudden left turn in the conversation.

 Mako muttered something Newt couldn’t make out. He wiped at his glasses with a sleeve smearing the water and fogging up his vision.

     “It’s nothing you did Mako. Sometimes grown-ups do stuff that doesn’t make sense. We’re really good at that.”

Newt wondered If Mako knew anything about Vows of Silence. Maybe she knew more than he did about Hermann’s history but he seriously doubted it. It must have been shitty to have heard him before only to suddenly lose the sound of his voice. Newt was honestly a bit jealous. He had never heard Hermann’s voice at all.

Mako didn’t budge and Newt blurted his next words without thinking.

     “It makes me sad too. He-…him not talking makes me sad too but we just have to be patient…right?”

This got her attention. Mako glanced up and Newt offered a smile he hoped was convincing. He nodded towards the shuttle stop.

     “Come on Maks. You’re starting to look like a wet cat. Let’s get outta here.”

The stick fell to the wet sand with a thump and Mako trudged up the hill. She didn’t say another word about their shared silent friend and Chuck was smart enough not to ask. The kids fell into step on either side of Newt and he put a soggy arm around each of them. He glanced back towards the choppy waves lost in his own thoughts until Mako flopped her head onto his shoulder.

     “Thank you Dr. Geiszler...for talking to us so honestly.”

Chuck grumbled and finally assented begrudgingly.

     “Yeah…thanks.”

Newt squeezed them both tightly grinning from ear to ear.

 “No problem.”

   The hospital was too loud. There was always some movement in the hall, some cough from an adjoining room. Muted conversation was everywhere and the footsteps of harried nurses were ceaseless. The caretaker’s rounds were like clockwork, even at night. There was always someone there to draw blood, clean bedding or check and re-check IV’s.  There was no escape from the constant barrage of polite door knocks and saccharine sweet voices.

Except today, today there had been an escape; the hospital’s usual pattern was interrupted and the nurse’s rotations simply forgotten. Hermann stalked down an empty white hall carrying a tray of hot tea and crackers. The unnatural hush was disquieting. On his mothers floor the nurse’s station was abandoned and most of the patients had closed their doors. They were undoubtedly glued to the news or frantically calling to check on family members.

Hermann paused to pick up a pile of spilled paper forms near a staff desk and set it neatly back where it belonged. He did not blame the hospital staff for their absence. If there was a patient emergency they would come. They, like the rest of the world, would find it impossible to focus on anything but the constant news footage pouring out of San Francisco. At any moment the United States might drop their first bomb and leave a vibrant chunk of California a desolate wasteland. The nuclear option seemed imminent and all anyone could do was watch and wait.

Hermann opened the door to his mother’s room and was relieved to find it as quiet as he had left it. His mother lay on a bulky bed with thick plastic railings. She was buried under a pile of quilts from home and surrounded by a meadow’s worth of flowers. She looked so wane, pale- a tiny fragment of the woman he idolized. She stared fixedly at a muted television mounted high on the opposite wall. The flashing light of it ghosted over her and made her waxy skin even more corpselike.

She didn’t look away when he entered and set the tray on her bedside table, struggling to rest it in the small space unoccupied by bouquets and pill bottles.

     “<Thank you Liebling. I’ll drink some in a moment.> “

Hermann’s mother spoke in Bavarian. More specifically she spoke her favorite Oberbayern Regional.  It was a language Hermann hadn’t used since childhood and sometimes struggled to remember. His Pure Berliner was better than his native Garmisch-Partenkirchen patter but he did his best.

They had been in the hospital in New York for months and though His mother’s English was very good she did not like to speak it. She preferred her own Regional and, whenever possible, the family language. These language issues had proved a serious communication problem with the hospital staff. Hermann had taken a temporary teaching position in the United States to be close and visited almost every day; but it wasn’t enough. He was always rushing to the hospital to help translate or calm his mother down after she woke up scared and confused about where she was. Her bad days were becoming more and more frequent.

 It frustrated Hermann that he could not take her home. She should have been in hospice care in her own house...not here. Not in this small, ugly hospital room full of screeching monitors. His father had abandoned her here. His work sent him scurrying to all parts of the world and he had just discarded her in what he claimed was “One of the finest facilities in North America.”

Hermann’s mother brushed his arm gently her voice anxious.

     “<What did the doctor say yesterday Hermann?>”

She wasn’t asking about her own doctor. They met with him on a weekly basis and she was very adamant about knowing exactly what was going on when it came to her own health. She was asking about Hermann’s doctor; the specialist he had been going to see about the headaches. Hermann tried to pull his gaze away from the television but he found he just didn’t have the willpower.

     “<It’s not important right now. >”

The creature bit a jet in half with a casual jerk of its massive head. The sharp edges of its skull reminded Hermann of something dark from his childhood. When he was six he had gone with his grandfather Gottleib, his father’s father, to the village butcher to get a goose for Christmas dinner. His grandfather had coldly instructed him to pick a friendly gabbling goose from a crate in the back of the shop...told him he needed to know where his food came from. Now watching the skyscraper sized terror rampaging down a San Francisco street all Hermann could think of was a cold glinting butcher’s ax  dripping with steam and goose blood behind a tiny shop in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

His mother gripped his arm bringing him back to the stuffy room full of dying smells; Dying cells and dying flowers.

     “<I want to know…>”

He swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut.

     “<They said they would need to run more tests but they seem comfortable…s-seem certain that I display symptoms of…of Multiple Sclerosis.>”

She didn’t let her grip loosen and the room was back to dark empty silence. The rampaging monster swept its leg, moved its tail and in an instant a historic row of brightly painted houses disintegrated into rubble. It raised its head and gave an empty roar on the muted screen. Hermann’s mother moved easily from Bavarian into the family language, slipping into it like a comfortable sweater.

     “[Your grandfather on my side of the family died when I was very young. I know I’ve told you before that he was Jewish. My mother practiced faithfully until his death but we fell out of it afterwards.]”

 Hermann did know. Hebrew was one of his mother’s languages and some of its more poetic phrases slipped into her use of family language like afterthoughts; his father did not use them. Hermann knew a little but wished he had learned more. Latin, English and Cantonese might have been more practical but Hebrew was a beautiful, mysterious language full of magic words. He finally peeled his eyes from the newscast to look at his mother. She smiled and her grip on his arm was comforting.

     “[I remember vividly before he died he sat me down on the arm of his chair one night in winter and told me about Golems. Have I ever told you about Golems Hermann?]

Hermann felt a smile crinkle his face automatically, his vision obscured slightly as tears started to build.

     “[No. You haven’t.]”

   She looked mock hurt and let go of his arm to grapple with the plastic buttons on the side of her bed. With a whine of electronic parts, she raised herself up to a sitting position. Hermann took a mug of tea in a slightly shaking hand and gave it to her carefully. She sipped as she started to talk.

     “[A Golem is an unfinished creature. A half-formed thing created from clay or mud. Like all things its power comes from language. A rabbi speaks certain words or writes a single word here…]

She reached out and tapped Hermann’s forehead, right between his eyes.              

     "[There are arguments about precisely which words are used but most agree Emet the Hebrew word for truth is carved carefully into the forehead. To deactivate a Golem, you have to remove a letter of the word and change it from Emet to met which means death.]'

 Hermann rubbed at his forehead and raised an eyebrow.           

     "[I’d heard of them before…Frankenstein’s monster was supposedly based on the idea of Golems.]"

His mother shook her head clicking her tongue taking a contemplative sip of her Earl Grey.

     "[Mmm…there are some similarities but that monster could think. He had opinions and most importantly he could talk. In the Talmud they make it clear that a Golem is a husk. An empty bit of dust without the ability to speak...no voice means no language. No Core.]"

Hermann reached for his own tea and took a wobbly sip. His head was beginning to throb, a migraine bubbling up and looking for a foothold.

     "[So why make a Golem? From what I’ve heard they weren’t evil creatures. Didn’t rabbis make them to protect people?]'

For a moment her eyes flicked up to the TV and back, the light moving over her face in violent waves. Guttering in and out like the tide, like something huge breathing.

     "[The most famous Golem was made by a rabbi in Prague. At the time the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was a cruel man who was killing his Jewish subjects as he saw fit. Massacres in the Prague ghetto were commonplace and so the rabbi took mud from a riverbank to make a Golem. He spoke the right incantations over it and gave his people a defender…but...]"

     “[But?]”

     “[In some versions of the story…in the version my father told me, the rabbi eventually loses control of his creation and it goes on a rampage. It is ignorant of who it hurts because there’s nothing inside it. It’s just a vessel for its master’s desires.]"

A flash on the television made Hermann jump and he almost dropped his mug juggling it a moment in trembling fingers before he got a firm grip again. He looked up at the TV and saw a cloud of smoke blooming around the monster. It reared up out of the pale foggy haze and glowing streams of blue blood gushed from a wound in its neck. It seemed barely fazed by whatever new weapon was being thrown at it.

There was a click and the screen of teeth and carnage went black. Hermann blinked at his mother who held the remote up in front of her like a weapon; like she had destroyed the threat with the click of the off button. She was breathing hard, panting like she had just run a marathon and her expression was livid. She looked enraged; affronted that something so repugnant should exist at all. His mother switched to Bavarian her voice hissing and angrier than Hermann had ever heard it.

     “<That thing is an empty shell. There is nothing inside it at all. It might not be made of mud but it’s still some kind of Golem, Hermann. I remember having nightmares of rampaging Golems after my father told me about them. Maybe they can be good but in my nightmares they were mindless marching creatures that killed everything in front of them.>”

Hermann stared at her speechless. Eventually he stood, setting his tea down before reaching out to gently take hers. She let out a surprised breath the fire in her eyes dimming. She seemed taken aback at her own outburst and broke into a coughing fit that lasted a solid minute. Hermann reached for the call button in alarm but she waved his hand away shaking her head.

The coughing spasm calmed as she slowly got her breath back. The dark circles under eyes seemed to deepen and the rasp in her breathing sharpened to a whip crack. Hermann rubbed his pale hands nervously against his pant-legs. He wished the fucking monster had never come or more selfishly he wished that if it had to come at all it could have at least waited until his mother had passed. Given her some fucking peace in the last days she had. He cringed internally at his own thoughtlessness.

     “<Maybe you should take a nap before dinner Mutter. Karla might come by in the evening.>”

Hermann’s mother shut her eyes and nodded slowly. The silver in her thinning, short-cropped hair was all the more apparent, the crow’s feet and the blue veins laid out in the open. Her father, Hermann’s grandfather the Jewish storyteller had died of MS. She had not said it but he wondered if she knew that he knew. She was always apologizing for her illness and now she seemed on the verge of apologizing for her genes. It all shimmered black and ugly under the surface waiting to emerge like a rampaging monster.

Hermann’s mother took his hand again and he wrapped his long slender fingers around hers. He wanted to promise her there and then that he would defeat the monster, the one killing him and the one killing San Francisco both. He would be like a prince from her stories; a hero who killed the dragon or fooled the giant.

     “I’ll wake you in a little while…I promise.”

Leaning down Hermann kissed her forehead gently. Both of them knew deep down that Karla, the only other Gottlieb that lived in New York, wouldn’t show up today. His mother did not protest. She curled into the uncomfortable hospital mattress and whispered something he didn’t catch.

Hermann sat with her, clicking the TV back on the moment he was sure she was asleep.

   Movie night was a weekly event in the Tokyo Shatterdome. It was a nice gesture that the higher ups kept it going despite the now constant budget cuts. Part of the Hangar bay was cleared and folding chairs were set up in neat rows by off-duty mechanics. Staff commandeered a huge white tarp and pinned it to the nearest convenient wall. When the bay lights were dimmed they used the makeshift screen and an old digital projector to show movies to the masses. The showings usually included three movies back to back. People would come and go as they pleased but most would stay through the entire set.

Newt had no idea who curated the lineup but it reminded him of something he had read about the popularity of Shirley Temple vis–à–vis The Great Depression in America. The theory went that the shittier the depression got the more popular the bubbly child star grew; and it had very little to do with how hard she was tap-dancing.

People living in shit times don’t want to watch dark movies, they want peppy romances or implausibly bright musicals. Newt thought this hypothesis held water. His own wartime media consumers seemed desperate for happy endings. Most of the weekly Shatterdome movie nights offered cheesy rom-coms or standard feel-good family fare.

Newt ambled slowly down a steep metal staircase to the Hangar bay floor. The flicker of the movie screen/tarp was just visible beyond a pile of discarded Jaeger couplings. Newt shivered against a chill from some distant open door. He squeezed through a crowd of Dome workers moving his direction in a plodding, weary herd. The smell of popcorn and grease pervaded everything. Popcorn was still cheap enough to buy in bulk despite the rationing. Butter wasn’t unfortunately and unsalted plain popcorn didn’t sound very appealing.

Perched at the edge of the audience Newt surveyed the chairs trying and failing to convince himself he hadn’t walked all this way just to find his mute mathematician.
In the flickering lights most of the dirty tired faces looked the same and Newt sighed long and low.

Hermann hadn’t been in his quarters or the lab. He had been working non-stop for days was supposed to be catching up on some much needed sleep (orders from the top). Newt knew Hermann couldn’t turn off his brain long enough to let it slip into REM, especially when his chalk sigils projected a Kaiju event any day now. His unvoiced associate wandered when he was restless and there was a good chance he had come down here. Newt knew he would make an effort to catch a flick if it was a classic. He liked his movies in black and white…anything with Frank Sinatra or Gene Kelly.

An animated seagull squawked up on the big screen and Newt jumped when the crowd around him started to laugh. He had been so intent on finding Hermann he hadn’t even noticed the Disney movie blaring ten feet in front of him. Sinking into the nearest empty chair Newt leaned back on the cold metal and lifted is gaze to the screen distractedly.

He was worried about Hermann. His professional colleague and possibly only friend had seemed off today, sad. Not even the spray of intestines Newt had intentionally thrown on his side of the lab had gotten a rise out of the man. That was…troubling. They were both ludicrously overworked but Hermann maybe more so the past few weeks. The newest predictive deadlines put him on a brutal cycle of calculate, report, rinse and repeat.

Ariel was singing about wanting to be where the people were and Newt watched with a quirked eyebrow. He hadn’t seen this since what-…before college? The nineties? He wasn’t anti-Disney but he didn’t actively seek out their fun filled romps either. Maybe this was a dead-end. This didn’t seem like Hermann’s scene at all. Newt pulled his cell-phone out of his pocket and tapped a quick message tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.

            N- Hey. Where are U? been trying to contact u all day.

The moment he pressed the send button there was a corresponding and somewhat muffled beeping noise. It sounded like R2-D2 and Newt felt pressure lift off his heart the moment he heard it. He spotted the back of Hermann’s head near the front of the crowd as he pulled out his own phone to check the message and turn off the notification sound. Newt fired off another message immediately.

            N- Hey! I C U!

The shaved back of Hermann’s terrible military haircut turned briefly. In the dim light Newt could see Hermann give the crowd a cursory once over before he faced the screen again. Newt’s cell phone vibrated a silent reply and he read the screen eagerly ignoring the pointed glares form the people around him.

            H- Good for you.  I am trying to watch the movie.

Hermann was terrifyingly fast at texting. He had to be, it was one of the only ways he communicated. Newt was thankful everyday that the Shatterdome had its own standard flat rate cellular services that included limitless texting. He and Hermann sometimes texted for hours at a time and he couldn’t imagine the staggering usage bills they had accrued over the years. His thumbs flew over the keyboard and he grinned trying, for the millionth time, to hear his friend’s voice in his head.

             N- The Little Mermaid? Srsly? 4 some reason I just don’t c this being your sort of thing dude

Sometimes Newt imagined Hermann sounded like Tim Curry and he would giggle to himself over a bit of Kaiju viscera. Sometimes, mostly when he was really pissed at him, he would imagine Hermann sounded like a bad Nazi stereotype; his voice clipped and pompous as he tried to keep the Von Trapps from escaping to Switzerland. When he felt lonely he would sometimes read Hermann’s old e-mails and heard a voice closer to David Bowies.

He knew none of these were accurate and it made him miss Hermann’s real voice more than ever. Despite the fact he had never actually heard it. Hermann spared a glance back over his shoulder before a reply buzzed in Newt’s hands.

            H-I can like any movie I please without your judgment thank you very much. What do you want? Was there a lab emergency? Did the Marshall need something?

Newt found himself hesitating. He liked Hermann…a lot…like, a lot a lot, but the guy seemed indifferent to him…or maybe just oblivious. There hadn’t been a moment in the last three years they weren’t either constantly e-mailing or texting one another but Newt wondered if Hermann would even miss him when he transferred to Vladivostok next month.

             N-Nah man I was just bored thought I would see what you were doing ; )

             H-I’m an adult, Newton. I don’t need you checking in on me.

They had been sharing the Tokyo lab for coming up on two years and Newt still didn’t know why Hermann didn’t talk, although he had a lot of theories about it. Tendo was almost 100 percent sure he had taken a real, honest to god Vow of Silence.

Maybe not a complete blackout one like Gandhi had taken but definitely akin to the vows Newt had learned about in American history. Jefferson had taken one until the Declaration had been signed…a lot of women on the home front had taken them during WW2, swearing not to say a word until the fight was over. It brought to mind the famous image of Rosie the Riveter; her arm curled up to show off her muscles, a bandage around her mouth to show her solidarity.

             N- ok Not checkin' on you don’t even care if your dead or alive that better? :P

             H- A huge improvement. Thank you for your lack of concern.

Vows were extremely rare and in Newt’s eyes utterly stupid. Why was Hermann giving up so much? No family language, no inner language and outwardly? No Regional language. Maybe it meant a little less with the pixilated word available all the time but-why would Hermann do it?

When would it stop? When the war was over? Why the FUCK wouldn’t he just tell Newt anything? Were his feelings that unrequited? Newt didn’t even care if he understood one word of Hermann’s Core language because he understood him; The man. The legend. He loved him and he didn’t care if Hermann Core Lingua sounded like a cat-piano played in a steel mill. He just wanted to be around him. It wasn’t that much to ask.
Newt rolled a steady stream of conflicting thoughts around in his head and tapped out a text with a small smirk.

            N-then how bout three guesses?

            H- If I play this asinine game will you let me watch the movie in peace?

            N- Yes =DDD

The crowd had started singing around Newt, their voices loud and raucous. He blinked at the screen and spied the large yellow subtitles flashing on the bottom of a colorful reef. A bouncing ball hit each word encouraging the Shatterdome to tell the world about a superior life found under the sea. It was especially funny since the movie was Japanese with English subtitles but the songs were still in English for some inconceivable reason.

Newt didn’t know they even did sing-along movie nights but that was apparently what was going on. Hermann stuck out like a sore thumb now, he was one of the only people in the front rows who wasn’t singing. Newt ignored the Caribbean crab and the off-key warbling from the engineers behind him texting his first guess excitedly.

            N- Jeremy Irons?

There is a pause and the song finally came to a close. Newt tried to recall how many freaking songs there are in the Little Mermaid. Maybe he’d sing the next one really loud just to tick Hermann off.

            H- No. Not even close. Cold.

Newt didn’t remember when the game started exactly. At some point after they had first started texting years back he had asked what Hermann’s voice sounded like. The easiest way was to compare it to whatever celebrities he could think of. He usually only got three guesses before Hermann lost his temper and wouldn’t play anymore. After about a billion guesses he had gleaned that Hermann had a British type accent despite his German heritage; He got that from boarding school maybe-or plenty of BBC binge watching as a kid.

              N- Michael Caine?             

              H- No, even colder. Michael Caine has a cockney accent.

              N- Whoa seriously? Like the guy in Mary Poppins?

              H- No Newton an ACTUAL cockney accent.

              N- >=

Newt made a mental note. Hermann did not have a cockney accent.

             N- Alan Rickman?

             H- Haven’t you already guessed him? Multiple times?

             N- I know ur lyin! U sound like him I know it!

             H- No. warmer than Caine but still cold, Newton. That was three.

The movie had gone from really quiet to really loud while Newt had been focused on his phone. The crab had spilled the beans about the smallish mermaid’s human crush. Her dad was destroying her human-groupie collection and some of the crowd was actually booing. It really had been a long time since he had seen this. Newt didn’t remember this bizarrely brutal collection destroying scene at all. It seemed like pretty shitty mer-parenting.

The sea-witch’s eel cohorts appeared to escort the idiot teenager away and after a moment of build-up another song started. Newt tried to follow along but he lost the melody and eventually just watched the people around him sing. Some of the Rangers in the back were really going to town on the chorus. Newt fidgeted and a thought nagged at him- tickling the back of his brain. He tossed his phone from hand to hand eyes glued to the screen as the miniature mer-person signed away her voice.

He didn’t mean to break his promise so soon. He had fully intended to wait at least fifteen minutes before he texted Hermann again but the thought wouldn’t go away.

             N- Hey this the reason you like this movie? Are you secretly a buff merman that sold your voice for a sweet set of gams?

He watched Hermann glance down at his phone and Newton fully expected he wouldn’t answer and yet only a few seconds passed before his phone jittered against his fingers.

             H-If these are the legs I got for my voice I think I should demand some sort of refund.

Newt gave a sincere snorting giggle and covered his mouth  

             N- you know I always forget u are secretly funny

 Newt barely stopped himself from writing “and that’s another reason I love you” at the end.

             H-Don’t tell anyone. I don’t give public shows.

             N- lol

             H-I like stories like this. Fairy stories. But the versions I heard growing up weren’t like this. This one in particular was much more sadistic.

             N- That’s cool that your into that stuff dude.  I knw som e of the fairytales were dark like red ridin hood but I don’t know this one. How is it different?

Newt was constantly, and pleasantly, surprised by all the random nerdy crap Hermann knew about. Arcane knowledge of fairytales? Sure why not. Throw that up on the pile with his bizarre expertise of medieval weaponry and his perfect recall of the original D&D creature codex.  

Maybe that was the initial cause of all these unbidden gooey feelings Newt was trying not to pay attention to. He had his own eccentric hobbies and dumb obsessions. It was…It was nice to find somebody else who reveled in that level of geeky know-how.

It took much longer for Hermann to answer this time and Newt knew he was typing a book length reply.

 He did that sometimes when he was in a “talky” mood. Everyone in the dome assumed that Newt was the unpredictable bi-polar one and yeah they were half right-but Hermann could start texting theories about quasars at one in the morning and Newt considered that perfectly normal behavior. The flipside was that he could also go a week without a single e-mail. Those silences were terrifying. Silence scared Newt more than Kaiju ever could.

             H-The original version the story is very similar but when the mermaid gives up her voice and gains legs every step she takes on land feels like stepping on sharp knives. She is in constant pain.

              N- Geezus!

              H- Also at the end her prince marries another princess and the mermaid’s sisters go to the sea-witch and trade their hair for a dagger. If the mermaid kills the prince with it she can go back to her family as a mermaid again. If she doesn’t kill the prince she’ll die and become sea foam. She doesn’t kill him of course. It’s a very sad ending.

             N-Well YEAH that’s fuckin horrible dude I think ill stick with this version              

             H-The Disney interpretation is happier true but I think her sacrifice in the original story is beautiful in its own way. She didn’t get what she wanted but she gave up something so she could try. She held her silence and in the end she did what was right. That’s bravery.

Newt stared at the text and behind him as dozens of people whispered and sang in a smattering of Regional languages. The Japanese workers considered it improper to speak familial language outside the home but here and there someone was singing in something more exotic; maybe a family language to remind them of home. Something so integral to themselves they didn’t even give it a second thought. Cold settled vice like around Newt’s lungs and he clenched his jaw. He could have been wrong but this felt like the closest Hermann had ever gotten to talking about his vow; Because of a movie with a singing crab.

             N- I think it’s kinda stupid. She didn’t have to do it the way she did. She could have asked around before goin the Sea witch route. Maybe if she had asked the right fish for help. Some fish are super good listeners.

It took Hermann so long to reply this time Newt thought the conversation was really over. He wished Hermann was close enough that he could touch him. Hermann didn’t mind a squeeze on the shoulder every once in awhile-liked it even. His phone vibrated tiredly and Newt read the reply twice puzzling over it.

             H-Fish can let you down. Sometimes it’s better to just do things yourself.

Newt poised a finger over his screen trying to find the right question. He was itching to ask more about Hermann’s family, his father…his vow. Was this a good in? He bounced his leg unhappily typing a few letters then erasing them again. If he straight up asked a question Hermann would probably dive right back into avoidance again; another goddamn impasse.

The movie and the voices of the people around Newt were suddenly lost to a wave of shrill grasping noise. He jerked his head up nearly dropping his phone as the klaxons flooded the Hangar Bay demanding to be heard. Blue emergency lights flashed from every corner of the open Hangar and the Kaiju alarm blared out a proximity warning. The engineers and rangers scrambled into action instinctually. The mechanics and LOCCENT techs racing to their battle stations even as the little mermaid raced to stop the sea witch from marrying her prince.

Newt watched Hermann struggle to his feet his body moving stiffly his weight resting precariously on his cane.  He went to meet his friend cringing when he remembered how far they were from the elevator to the LOCCENT Bridge. Hermann would insist on the stairs because he was a stubborn asshole. Newt reached out to take his arm freezing when their eyes met. There was a shine in Hermann’s eyes that looked like tears.

Newt did his best to ignore this. He swallowed thickly and gestured towards the bridge with a smile, screaming to be heard over the rush of activity and the harsh alarm.

            “Come on. Break times over.”

   Hermann decided the best place to hide was behind the melting ice sculpture on the ravaged buffet table. He had made the calculations in his head and it seemed no one had a very good view of him obscured behind the oversized hors d'oeuvre platters. He gripped his untouched glass of wine tightly and watched a fat drop of cold water gather momentum and fall from the tip of Brawler Yukon’s icy hand.

The carved likeness of the Jaeger locked in combat with a cat-1 Kaiju Hermann didn’t recognize seemed tacky at best. It was exactly the sort of thing that a group of people completely untouched by combat and rationing would find appropriate. The exact people he found himself surrounded by.

Hermann had been in Los Angeles for less than twenty-four hours and he felt dead on his feet. His left leg had not reacted well to the seven-hour flight from Berlin and a sharp headache was beginning to flare behind his right eye. Lightcap had told him to pack something formal but she had not been clear on the specifics. She had not warned him that he would walk out of the airport and into a waiting limo. He hadn’t had three minutes to acclimate to the warmer climate before he was thrust into some kind of PPDC fundraiser.

The event, as far as Hermann could tell, was to honor the completion of the LA Shatterdome. It was also a charity social for the PPDC science divisions. Hermann hadn’t been briefed on the fundraiser; he had come at Lightcap’s urging. She had asked for his help with the programming errors plaguing Romeo Blue and its younger sibling the Mammoth Apostle. The problems couldn’t be debugged from Alaska, she had insisted, he needed to come in person. So here he was, straight from his rusty bunk on Kodiak Island to a golden ballroom in the Hollywood Hills.  

The radioactive hole that was once San Francisco was just a six-hour drive away, the Kaiju attacks were only becoming more frequent and yet the people in the glitzy hotel ballroom seemed oblivious to all of it. Hermann massaged his temples and finally took a small sip of his wine. Of course it was excellent.

He tried not to enjoy it glowering at an immaculately dressed starlet as she swept past him towards the crudités. She looked vaguely familiar and Hermann wondered idly which movie he might recognize her from. When he was younger Hermann had watched American movies and British television almost nonstop. It helped with his language lessons but in the larger part it was an escape. Stories were always an escape. The actress gave him a worried look over her shoulder and made a not so subtle dash for the nearest group of chattering people. 

     “You look about ready to kill someone.”

Caitlin Lightcap sounded different in person than she had on a static-filled Academy landline. Hermann had spoken to her on the phone many times, traded e-mails and even skyped on occasion but this was his first time meeting the legendary scientist in person. She made her way past several servers dressed in neon blue tuxedos and stood next to him in the empty corner. She wasn’t smiling.

     “I think I overheard Emma Watson complaining about you to Bruce Gage.”

Hermann contemplated an answer through his headache. He wasn’t in the mood for breezy conversation and the fact Lightcap hadn’t given him fair warning irked him. He tried not to snarl when he answered. 

     “Well. I sincerely doubt Miss Watson would be as chipper if she had been thrust into the situation I find myself in at present. More information about this would have been…appropriate Dr. Lightcap.”

Caitlin’s dress looked cheaply made and she had made no effort to have it tailored. She wore little makeup and her gingery-red hair lay in a loose braid past her shoulders. She looked out of place and as deeply uncomfortable as Hermann felt. She pulled idly at her necklace, eyes forward and scanning the crowd.

She answered in Berliner German and it was a lovely relief to hear the familiar language in such a strange place. Lightcap was fluent in at least fifteen Regional languages while Hermann barely knew four fluently. She seemed to be as adept at learning Regional as she was at coding.  

     “<I knew if I came clean you would refuse. I felt less anxious knowing you would be here so I lied. I won’t apologize for it…you’re going to have to get used to this sort of thing once you leave the academy. The PPDC thinks that scientists have nothing better to do then press junkets and charity dinners. We have to battle for every scrap of funding.>”

Hermann sighed and nodded taking another slow sip of his wine.

     “<You’re right. I would have refused…this whole thing is ridiculous.>”

Crossing her arms over her chest Caitlin leaned into the wall behind her, a look of utter disgust on her face. The anger in him cooled and Hermann leaned next to her in his baggy suit resigning himself to people-watch.

     “<I can’t fault you for luring me in…but aren’t there other PPDC staff here?>”

Lightcap gestured with a flick of her head and pushed her thick, round glasses up the bridge of her nose.

      “<Many. There are LOCCENT techs, some military brass and some scientists from the K and J science divisions. But no one gives a rat’s ass about them really. All the celebrities are here for the Rangers. You can’t have a gaudy event like this without Rangers. They’re the real draw.>”

She squinted and finally pointed out another large and expensive looking Kaiju ice sculpture at the front of the room. It was surrounded on all sides by massive bouquets of pale blue roses. A gaggle of well-dressed people formed a ring around two identical men in full military regalia.

      “<See? There are the Gage brothers and Stacker Pentecost is around here somewhere. Possibly even more miserable than we are.>”

Hermann felt a prickle of nervousness raise the hairs on the back of his neck. Meeting Lightcap did not intimidate him. She was a colleague if not a friend after their many hours of work together. But Stacker Pentecost was a distant godlike figure; a hero to the academy and a beacon of hope for the Jaeger program. Hermann took a larger gulp of wine.

     “<Well if he can get through it I suppose we can too.>”

 Lightcap groaned and pushed herself upright grabbing Hermann’s wineglass and draining the rest of it in two gulps. She wiped at her mouth with the back of a hand and switched to English.

     “I’m getting the stink eye. I’m a founder so I’m required to mingle. You can lay low but if anyone fancy speaks to you be polite and try not to glower so much…I’ll collect you in a few hours.”

Hermann nodded and took back the empty wine glass when she thrust it towards him. He gave it a tired look and debated a refill. Alcohol would only make his headache worse but if he was going to make it through the evening it might be a risk he was willing to take. Moving past the frozen Jaeger/Kaiju battle Hermann glanced at a platter of finger sandwiches. If he was going to drink eating would be the wise choice no matter how much his stomach ached.

He reached for a plate and stopped when something caught his eye. A small girl was watching him from the other side of the table. She looked away when he caught her staring and he couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. She was alone and it seemed odd someone so young would be here without a guardian close by. Perhaps she was related to a movie star and this was nothing out of the ordinary. Hermann selected a cucumber sandwich and addressed her nonchalantly.

     “Are you enjoying the party?”

The girl nodded shyly plopping a chocolate strawberry onto her own plate. Her answer was in English but she spoke with a very thick Japanese accent that made it clear she had not been speaking English long.

     “Yes. It is lovely. You are friends with Miss Lightcap?”

Hermann added an assortment of cheese and a few bacon wrapped shrimp to his plate. He made his way around the table to be closer to the girl so he could hear her better. At the front of the ballroom a four-piece jazz ensemble was tuning up for their set and the chatter around them was rising in pitch.

     “Miss Lightcap and I work together. She and I are in the Jaeger Sciences department.”

All at once the girl’s shyness dissolved, Hermann’s words breaking through to her like a magic spell. She beamed up at him and gesticulated wildly with her free hand.

     “Yes! Yes, the Jaegers! I want to work with them too!”

In her excitement the girl slipped from English to Japanese and Hermann strained to understand her. He was in constant communication with the robotics department at the University of Tokyo and learning a basic Tokyo Regional as fast as he could.

While his grasp of the language was improving he could really only understand parts and only when it was spoken very slowly; his own pronunciation was atrocious. Hermann cleared his throat and formally offered the girl his hand speaking in the best Japanese he could muster. 

     “ <My name Is Hermann Gottlieb.>”

She took it politely bowing her head as she answered. She kept to a generic “Americana” English and he wondered If she had been instructed to do so to help her practice.

     “I am Mako Mori. Would you sit with me? We can talk about jaegers?”

     “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Mori,  and while I would love to talk about jaegers I’m not sure if I can…”

There was nothing Hermann would have loved more than to sit down. His hip was throbbing and the muscles in his leg jittered from fatigue. At the head of the ballroom near the stage area where the Gage Twins were situated there were more than a dozen large round tables. Around these a diverse scattering of people sat talking or eating. Despite his pain Hermann hadn’t ventured there for fear he would be drawn into uncomfortable conversation or insipid questioning.

He wasn’t wearing a badge or ID to show who he was but-he certainly didn’t look like a movie star so it wouldn’t be hard to guess which team he was playing for. Mako seemed to sense his uncertainty and she took his hand leading him decisively towards one of the tables.       

The little girl navigated the crowd with practiced ease and Hermann took the chair she offered at an isolated table near the band. It had been set apart and seemed to have an even more elaborate centerpiece than the other tables. Sprouting from the pale blue roses a small sign read “reserved for VIP” in four different languages. Under it was the PPDC logo, the stark black eagle and star.

     “Mako should we be sitting here? This table is reserved…”

The girl observed the sign unperturbed and took a large bite of a ripe chocolate dipped strawberry.

     “Reserved for us.  Tell me about your work with the jaegers?”

 Hermann shrugged under his baggy dress-shirt. By “us” he assumed that Mako meant all members of the PPDC could sit here and she herself was a daughter to one of the various techs or military figures presently courting the room. That made sense if she had recognized Lightcap, possibly her parents were stationed in the newly opened LA dome. It was rare, but he had heard of special allowances for children living in larger barrack spaces in Anchorage.

Nibbling at one of his own sandwiches Hermann grinned when he saw the napkins had been folded to look like swans. He picked one up delicately and held it with care.

     “I program them. I create strings of numbers and code that helps jaegers connect with pilots. I’m a mathematician and a physicist. I-er. I work with numbers. It…It’s rather difficult to explain…”

Mako listened to him utterly enthralled, only tearing herself away long enough to wipe the ring of chocolate from around her mouth. He had expected her to be confused by these terms but that didn’t seem to be the case. Her eyes face lit up when he said the word coding and she answered quickly.

     “Yes! Programs! You help make the jaegers move. You are important. I have heard of these important jobs. Lightcap has told me.”

She couldn’t have been more than ten Hermann decided. She carried herself with seriousness beyond her years but he could see the childlike wonder shine in her eyes as he continued. She hung on every word when he told her about the academy and his work on jaegers like Romeo Blue or Lark Chevalier.

She only interrupted to ask formal questions that he answered as best he could. Some of her queries were surprisingly advanced. How big can you make a Jaeger? Why can’t we make them faster? It was refreshing to find someone who asked completely genuine questions about a subject he loved.

The band was very good as well. They played the kind of music that Hermann loved. He had inherited his mother’s record player and substantial LP collection when she passed and he listened her Jazz and big band music when he worked. It was soothing. The food, Mako and the music, or perhaps a combination of the three placated his migraine to a manageable ache and he was shocked to realize he was beginning to enjoy himself.

     “I think that if you fold this here…oh dear, no that’s not right either.”

Mako and Hermann had moved on from talk of jaegers to puzzling out how the swan napkins were folded. They dissected one of the whole ones on their table then tried, and failed, to refold their own napkins to match. Mako giggled when Hermann finally managed a crinkled and soggy looking mess that could have been a swan if one squinted hard enough.

     “It looks close, Dr. Gottlieb!”

Hermann pursed his lips and groaned when the swan fell apart in his hands.              

     “Drat. One more try?”

Mako nodded enthusiastically reaching for one of the table’s last pre-folded swan they had not pulled apart yet. She stopped mid-gesture and pulled her hands sharply into her lap, her head bowed low.

     “Sensei.”

Hermann cocked his head in confusion glancing over his shoulder to see who Mako was speaking to. He gasped staring up into the stern face of the lone wolf himself; Stacker Pentecost, the last pilot of the Coyote Tango. Hermann stammered, face turning scarlet as he struggled to stand and salute. He knocked his chair over backwards in his rush and had to stoop to pick it back up.

     “Oh! Ranger Pentecost! Sir, I… it’s an honor, sir.”

Pentecost looked very elegant in his full military regalia. He held his arms behind his back, expression patient and permanently stern. There was an air of authority that emanated from him, a commanding presence that left order in its wake. Hermann had trouble looking him in the eye.

     “I w-it’s its’ an honor to me-meet you sir.”

Stacker held out a hand and engulfed Hermann’s skinny fingers easily with his. His voice was warm, kinder than seemed possible.

     “Dr. Gottlieb isn’t it? Dr. Lightcap told me she expected you. I trust Mako has been behaving herself?

     “Er- Mako?”

Hermann found himself so focused on the handshake it took him a second to puzzle out what Pentecost had just said. His jumbled thoughts finally collected themselves and Stacker’s severe expression had relaxed itself into something that closely resembled a smile.

     “I have been watching the two of you all evening. She has been pestering you with a million questions I would imagine.”

  Hermann felt another wave of humiliation. In his jetlag exhaustion he hadn’t put two and two together. Mako Mori, the girl in Tokyo-the one he had read about in the field report. The one Stacker had saved from Onibaba. The one he had adopted. That was why she was the only child here among the glitz of Hollywood and the shining PPDC elite. Hermann straightened his voice coming out louder then he meant it to.

      “No! No she hasn’t been pestering at all…sir. She’s been wonderful company. The best I’ve had in ages if I was being honest.”

 Mako had risen out of her seat and come over to stand at Stackers side, staring up at him in adulation.

     “Sensei, Dr. Gottlieb told me about the Mach-2’s.”

     “Did he? Well you’re very  lucky, Gottlieb is an important scientist.”

The almost smile spread over Stackers features when Mako reached up to grip his hand. Hermann burned at the compliment. He didn’t think that Pentecost was the sort of man who gave those lightly. He felt disconnected from reality in that instant. Meeting the man he idolized in such bizarre extravagant settings gave everything a surreal quality. It felt like meeting a king at a royal ball.

Hermann took a deep breath mentally preparing his next words carefully. He wanted to thank the Ranger for his service and assure him that his daughter was extraordinarily bright. He wanted to assure him that she had been no trouble that she had been wonderful company. There was a flood of things he wanted to say…but at that moment the jazz music that had become ambient background noise curled and twisted into a long screech of static.

A surprised murmur ran through the room as everyone turned their collective attention to the stage. Hermann cringed; the migraine that had been biding its time at the back of his brain came howling back at the shock of noise. He squinted at the band with tearing eyes and puzzled at the dramatic scene unfolding there.

A man, very short and obviously very drunk, had done something to the jazz musicians speakers. He staggered back and forth with a microphone clasped in one hand while he fiddled with a panel of exposed audio hookups. Small murmurs and uncomfortable whispers filled the ballroom and already Herman could see security guards sprinting in from the sidelines.

They did not make it quite in time. Another sharp shriek of feedback shook the floor and rattled the windows and then a high shrill voice burst out of the speakers and into the room.

     “YOU HEAR ME? Yeah…OKAY! Listen…LISTEN. I got a couple things to say! First of all you people just destroyed that last Cat-2 and you didn’t even let me get some SPINE samples okay? OKAY? Like you know how important my work is?”

Stacker tensed at Hermann’s side but didn’t move. Hermann had expected him to storm the stage with the security team or at least look furious. He didn’t look furious at all. When Hermann spared him a quick glance he thought the man looked more…exasperated.

The drunk swayed around the edge of the stage, wobbling out into the crowd, microphone in hand.

     “Maybe…MAYBE if we studied the Kaiju...instead of BLOWING ‘em up - they could cure CANCER. I’m gonna see a LIVE one someday okay? OKAY?”

Hermann tried to see into the crowd. The man was so short and stocky he was easily lost among the tall, willowy people around him. Hermann swiveled his head and was finally able to catch a good look at him. The drunk had leaned up into the face of a man who was possibly Hugh Jackman and launched into a fresh tirade.

     “An’ another thing! How many of these…ASS-KISSING parties we need to have to get enough money to save the fucking WORLD huh? WE’RE SAVING YOUR ASS WOLVERINE.”

He was disheveled and his hair was as an unkempt mass of spiky tufts and gel. He wore large thick glasses and his clothes were at least two sizes too small for his stocky frame. During the course of the evening he had removed his dinner jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. Hermann could see the bright, flashy colors of tattoos on his right forearm but he couldn’t make out the subject matter.

Security was closing in on all sides and he just yammered on oblivious to them and the room at large. It was the most appalling display Hermann had ever seen. Stacker groaned placing his hand over his eyes and massaging his forehead. Mako stifled a giggle.

     “Er, Ranger Pentecost sir? Do you know that man?”

Stacker nodded without removing his hand.

      “That is Dr. Geiszler. He’s a biologist working for us on a trial basis but isn’t official PPDC yet. He’s was just accepted into the academy- “

The security guards were trying to grab Dr. Geiszler now, or at the very least take the microphone away from him. He babbled a possible familial language before screaming in English.

     “Don’t you touch me you –you CORELESS FASCISTS!”

Geiszler kicked haphazardly at the nearest burly non-descript guard and nearly fell over in the process. Hermann felt a bit sick to his stomach. As revolting as his behavior was he didn’t want to see someone pummeled to death by men twice their size.

There was a fresh rush of mutterings and Hermann grabbed for Mako, pressing her to him instinctively as something scattered the crowd violently in all directions. Whatever was happening spurred Stacker to finally take action. He pushed forwards as the well-dressed mob broke apart and Hermann caught sight of a taser one of the guards was holding. That was what had caused the sudden confusion. Lightcap’s voice carried above the din and Hermann spotted her elbowing her way towards Geiszler, waving to get security’s attention.

     “That’s enough! Don’t TAZE him for god sakes!”

Stacker moved himself bodily between the guards and Dr. Geiszler while Lightcap put a firm hand around his shoulders, hissing furiously in his ear. Whatever Stacker said apparently placated the guards and they let Lightcap lead the reeling drunk away without further harassment.

Hermann loosened his grip on Mako’s shoulders and let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding.

     “What an idiot.”

As the band tried to fix the damage done to the sound system Stacker picked up the microphone Geiszler had dropped and addressed the room in his cool, collected voice.

     “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the behavior of my colleague. I’m afraid he had a bit too much to drink. The PPDC would once again like to thank you for all your contributions and hope you know that all you give allows us the tools and manpower we need to win.”

Stacker graciously accepted a smattering of polite applause and left the stage as conversation and nervous laughter filled the room. The band launched into a new song and it was almost as if the whole ugly debacle had never happened at all. Pentecost made his way back to them and Hermann shook his head in disbelief.

     “That was very well handled sir…I can’t believe that a scientist would act in such a-a sordid manner.”

Mako put a hand to her mouth and stifled a laugh looking up at Hermann.

      “I think Dr. Geiszler is funny.”

Stacker took a breath and let out in a slow, deep sigh.

     “He can be…difficult, but he’s the best biologist we have and…”

 He looked around the room, at the beautiful clusters of people oozing luxury and shook his head.

     “…at times he has a point.”

     “I…sir?”

     “Nothing, Gottlieb.”

Gesturing vaguely towards the entrance hall Pentecost beckoned for Hermann and Mako to follow his lead. 

     “I think that is enough for one evening. Gottlieb you may share a car with Mako and I. We can see you safely to your hotel…I will inform Lightcap on our way out.”              

Hermann rubbed at his left eye as a sharp migraine pain began to stab at the socket. He nodded gratefully eager to leave for somewhere far away from people and noise.

     “Thank you sir.”

Mako took Hermann’s hand and pulled him along with great gravitas. Hermann briefly wondered if the drunken man would make it to the academy after what had just happened. Then he pushed Dr. Geiszler from his mind completely.

   The Vladivostok Shatterdome was a haphazardly built remnant of post cold-war engineering. Its hanger bay roof was a collection of massive steel panels that swung outward like window shutters. These were opened intermittently to let out hazardous fumes; essentially to air the place out. Snow built up so quickly in the outer exhaust ducts of its ventilation system that the panels were a vital part of keeping the dome air breathable.

Newt sat on the inner edge of an open vent panel, his back to the Hangar and his legs dangling out into white-washed nothingness. The ground was hundreds of feet below him but he couldn’t see it through the swirling snow and thick white fog. Shivering against a fresh gust of cold biting wind, Newt pulled his jacket closer.

Vladivostok sucked.

He hated the cold leaky barracks and he hated the lab space they had created for him in a tiny refrigerated bit of warehouse. There had not been a moment he had spent here that he had not been sick. From the instant he had disembarked the idling PPDC jet till this very second. Every waking moment had been the flu, a head cold or a chest infection. The Russian Shatterdome was chill and rusty and for every area that wasn’t icy it was sharp. One of the only perks was the food. It was better than Tokyo’s had been. They even had their own fishery and Newt couldn’t remember the last time he had tasted real fish.

Aside from the fish Vladivostok’s only saving grace was its residents. The Russians were more open with language then the Japanese which was refreshing.  Dozens of Regional dialects melted into a universal sort of “dome language.” When people worked long enough in the same place they would adopt personal words from close friends. Family language slipped into everyday speech. In Japan family language was taboo to speak in public and never with strangers.

Hermann would have probably liked Vladivostok. He would have hated the cold, but the Russians had a skill for filling up silence and he had a knack for creating it. Newt reached in his pocket and wrapped a gloved hand around his phone. Hermann hadn’t answered his last three e-mails or any of his texts. Newt told himself not to dwell on it but yeah of course he totally dwelled on it.

It was probably nothing at all but a dozen what-ifs were always racing through Newt’s thoughts. What if Hermann had fallen down where someone couldn’t find him? What if he couldn’t reach his phone? And most upsetting of all- what If Hermann was really sick?

Newt knew there was something wrong with him. Something that got progressively worse over time. Like most things with Hermann he could only make educated guesses about what was really going on. As a guy with a couple biology related doctorates he thought a neurological disorder was a safe bet. Maybe something Neurodegenerative like Parkinson’s disease.  Hermann tried to hide his symptoms but he couldn’t cover up the little tremors in his hands, the appearance of the cane or his balance issues.

What if Hermann had had some kind of relapse? Maybe that’s why he didn’t answer his messages. What if he had fallen right off a catwalk into an experimental Jaeger engine? Maybe he was at this very moment dying and/or receiving super powers and Newt wasn’t there to help and/or guide him on towards a life of crime fighting.

Newt yanked his phone from his pocket and stared at the screen checking fruitlessly for new messages. He started to talk to it in his family language voice grumpy and scratchy from a lingering cold.

     [Dammit Hermann why are you are so good at making me angry?]

Was Hermann mad that he left? He had come to say goodbye at the airplane hangar. He had even patted Newt on the shoulder. Fuck that was the most infuriating thing of all. It had been such a deceptively friendly pat. It had been borderline affectionate. Or maybe Newt had been reading too much into it. He always read too much into Hermann actions because nothing he did made sense.

One minute he would be handing out friendly pats and arm squeezes like beads on Mardi gras the next he would hide in storage closets just to avoid seeing Newt in the hallway. His hot and cold behavior and his silence hurt so badly and yet here Newt was again; worrying about the lanky asshole that made his life miserable. Newt pulled at his hair and groaned wretchedly- still babbling to himself.

     [Newt, you’re an idiot. He could have come with you. He could have transferred but he stayed in Tokyo and you should take that as a clue…you should just take that as a clue that he...]

Newt used a crusty sleeve to wipe snot roughly from his nose, his family language moving effortlessly into his own complex and melodious Core language.

     {He doesn’t care about you.}

Newt thought for a brief and overheated moment about chucking his cell phone out into the snowy waste below. The revenge fantasy was snuffed out immediately when he realized how stupid it was. Replacing the phone would be a major pain in the ass. Instead of giving in to a fit of unbridled angst he just checked his messages for the hundredth time in so many minutes.

     “Up here is not a good place for moping.”

Newt gasped and juggled his phone from hand to hand in surprise almost losing it into the void anyway. He finally got a good grip on the soap-shaped smart phone and jammed it deep into his coat pocket with a stuffy sigh of relief. Looking back at the catwalk to see who had spoken Newt was surprised to see Sasha Kaidonovsky; Ranger Kaidanovsky to be more accurate.

     “I wasn’t? I mean…No Ma’am?  You know what I’ll just go.”

Newt didn’t know any of the Russian Rangers outside the occasional polite hallway nod. In Japan the Rangers and Military staff all lived in different (and supposedly fancier) barracks away from the maintenance workers and scientist’s rooms. In Vladivostok everybody lived together in one cramped crappy space regardless of role or rank. They weren’t shy about strutting around naked in the shared bathrooms or hanging laundry out in the hallways either; Newt could attest to that.

The Kaidonovskys were the best pilots in Vladivostok, quite possibly the best Rangers in the PPDC. They had been with the program since its inception and could sustain a drift longer than any partners in the corps. They were also huge and in Newt’s opinion super fucking scary. The husband wife team were rumored not only to have mob ties but it was well known by the entire Shatterdome that they dealt bootleg booze and cheated outright at bi-weekly poker tournaments. Half of the notorious “blonde bears” stared at Newt now but she seemed more affable than threatening.

     “You come with me. Too cold up here and you growl when you breathe. Come with me down to hangar. We visit.”

     “Um. Visit?”

A smile was just there at the edges of her mouth, a ghost of friendliness. The Ranger offered her hand and Newt took it automatically letting her lift him to his feet. She tsked as she looked him over noting the red skin rubbed raw under his nose. Sasha murmured to herself in Russian and put a hand on the back of Newt’s neck steering him towards the nearest stairwell like she was leading a cow.

Newt let her do whatever the hell she wanted, bemused by the whole situation. They had never even had a conversation before this. Probably in part because his Primorye Russian was terrible and the accelerated learning tapes Tendo had given him as a goodbye gift were not helping at the speed he would have liked.

     “So, er…where are we going?”

Sasha tugged him down the stairs to the Hangar bay floor moving him effortlessly around groups of working mechanics and legions of distracted maintenance workers. Her bare fingers were warm on the scruff of his neck and Newt decided it was best to just go with it.

Sasha called out to a few people she knew in languages Newt didn’t recognize and finally frog-marched him under a canvas work canopy and into a protected area on the edge of the bay. Under the awning a circle of makeshift seats surrounded the biggest space heater Newt had ever seen. They were laid out neatly near an antique coffee machine and a stack of dirty cups. Kaidonovsky shoved Newt onto a chair made of an old bus seat and pointed at him meaningfully.

     “Stay. I will be back.”

Newt nodded still in a state of bleary shock. He sank into the seat and couldn’t help but bask in the heat radiating off the colossal orange coil near his boots. What he had called a “space heater” in his head was actually a discarded heating element from a Jaeger. Hermann had told-well…written him about them once. Most jaegers in the colder Shatterdomes had heating elements in their joints that could be activated to prevent them from freezing solid.

The deliciously warm coil of car-sized metal keeping the Shatterdome break-room toasty had probably been culled from the Alpha’s kneecap. Vladivostok had a cavalier, MacGyver-esque attitude towards replacement parts and this sort of recycling seemed typical from what Newt had seen. A heavy blanket edged with what looked suspiciously like real fur thumped onto Newt’s lap. He let out a woof of air and watched in mute shock as Sasha spread it over him and shoved a hot cup of something into his hand.

     “Drink that. Get warm. Hear you sneezing up and down the halls. Hacking and coughing day in day out. Pah. No stamina, all brains and no sense.” 

Newt stared at the bowl-sized mug and sniffed the contents tentatively. It was some kind of soup and had a bizarre pungent smell like someone had managed to boil a fart and mix it with raw fish. He recoiled from it trying his best not to gag.

     “What-…what is this?”

     “Sweet cabbage soup.“

Newt gagged and shifted to hand the bowl back to Sasha.

      “It smells awful-“

She eyed him coldly sitting in the nearest available chair her arms crossed across her chest.

      "My husband made it.”

     “-awfully GREAT. It smells just swell, yummy-yum.”

Newt backpedaled and raised the soup to his lips wincing in anticipation as he took a huge gulp. It was sour and sweet at once and the overall aftertaste he got was vinegar; A lot of vinegar. He arched back and coughed as it curled his tongue and cleared out his sinuses. Sasha Kaidanovsky watched him completely straight-faced a moment more before she began to laugh.

     “How is it? Good?”

Newt nodded, lips still puckered. He had to admit it wasn’t bad…just intense.

Sasha reclined into her chair and put her hands behind her head turning to watch the people bustling around the hectic Hangar bay. She focused on her and Alexis’s Jaeger, the imposing Cherno Alpha.

     “You finish it. All of it. Help you feel better. Aleksis says it will chase the cold out of you. His mother fed it to him and his sisters when he was young.”

Newt felt it was in his best interests not to argue and took another smaller sip. He savored it this time and it really did feel like the oniony-vinegary tang was easing the tightness in his chest.

     “I-Thanks ma’am. Mrs. Ranger Kaidanovsky, ma’am.”

She waved a hand completely covered with metal rings. There had to be three to each finger including her thumb. Newt swallowed a chunk of onion whole watching the light flash from a polished skull on her pinky.

     “Think nothing of.”

A large hunk of bread leaned half in the soup on the side of the mug. It was soft and Newt guessed freshly baked. He pulled it out and nibbled at the saturated edges. The vinegar taste was even better tamped down by sweet bread. He glanced at Sasha and felt like he should say …something. Make conversation.

Newt didn’t talk to many Rangers. Sometimes he would interview some unlucky pilot after a Kaiju encounter if he needed details that camera footage couldn’t provide. Those instances weren’t voluntary and on the whole anybody out of K-sci avoided him on principle.

The Cherno crew was working to replace a totaled chest panel and Newt plucked up the courage to ask something he had always been curious about.

     “So...Drifting. How about that? I mean-what does it, you know…feel like?”

Sasha screwed up one eye and fixed Newt with a hard glare reaching into her faux-fur lined ranger jacket to retrieve a small leather flask.

     “Drifting is a conversation. It is talk between two people but it uses only words from inside.”

She tapped her temple to illustrate.

     “That is why pilots must speak the same language inside.”

Newt was starting to feel better, warmer. The heater coil was thawing him on the outside while the soup worked on the inside. He took an enthusiastic bite of crust and chewed it with his mouth open as he spoke.

     “Yeah, but you don’t always have to have two pilots that speak pure Core right? It’s on a sliding scale like everything else.”

     “Some pilots, like the Wei’s or the Melero’s, they speak family language to each other in the drift. Regional and family are good but Core is better. Some Core pilots understand a percent of partners Core but the best Rangers are one hundred percent in understanding. One hundred percent compatible.”

Sasha preened and snuggled down into her coat flipping open the lip of her flask with a flourish.

     “That is why Aleksis and I hold the all-time record for drifting. We have Regional, shared family and perfect Core. He is my Argot.”

Hermann wrote a bit about pilot compatibility. Not too much, brain chemistry wasn’t his field, but he did have to think about how the pilots talked to each other when he programmed the jaegers. Something he said in a text came flooding back to Newt and he blurted it in a spray of breadcrumbs.

     “The code to run Jaegers is based on language of the pilots. Right?”

Newt turned his head to the side speaking his racing thoughts aloud.

             “You think they could program one to work without pilots in it. It seems like they could have made it work at the start of the program. I know Lightcap experimented with it. Like they tried to just build a program from the pilot’s Core alone-why did they stop?”

Sasha quirked an eyebrow and grinned, her bright red lipstick making her brightly white teeth all the more obvious.

     “You know. There is a story I was told when I asked a scientist in academy this question. You know about the Emperor and the Nightingale?”

She offered Newt the flask as he set down his empty soup bowl and he reached for it tentatively. 

     “That sounds…vaguely familiar. Sing a few bars and maybe I can fake it.”

Sasha chuckled and shook her head eyes still trained hawk-like on the techs fixing her Jaeger.

     “Once upon a time, there was a good Emperor loved by all. He had beautiful palace and beautiful gardens. In his gardens he had small plain bird that was the most beautiful thing of all. Not because of her outside but because of voice. She sang and it was so beautiful that all would stop and listen to her words. The Emperor heard of this bird and asked her to sing for him at the palace. The Nightingale was convinced after much coaxing and came to sing at the court of the Emperor.”

Newt took a slug of whatever booze was in the flask and was surprised to find it sweet and sort of buttery sliding down his throat. The opposite of what he expected.

     “The Emperor loved her so much he asked her to come day and night to court. He offered her a golden cage and fine things but she said that her freedom and his happiness was all she wanted. “

Snuggling back into the chair Newt felt suddenly drowsy. The heat and the Ranger’s voice made him forget he should have been busy worrying about something.

             “One day a friendly country to the south sent a great gift to the Emperor. It was a machine. A clockwork nightingale made of gold and covered with many jewels. When it was wound it would sing just as the Nightingale but unlike her it would never get tired or need to eat.”

             “So the Nightingale lost her job to a robot? Man here I thought people with factory jobs had it rough.”

Sasha leaned forward and jerked her flask from his hands giving him a small punch on the shoulder without missing a beat.

     “The Emperor used the clockwork bird everyday and the real Nightingale was soon forgotten. This went on until the Emperor grew sick. His advisors shook their heads unable to help, sad that their good king was dying. As he lay in bed death soon came to visit.”

Newt raised an eyebrow and had to physically bite his tongue to refrain from asking a question. He rubbed his sore arm and decided it would be smart to keep his trap shut.

     “Hoping to hear its song one more time the Emperor reached out for his clockwork bird. In his fear he knocked it to the ground and it broke into useless pieces. Death looked at him face pale and it reached out grasping fingers ready to take him.Then a beautiful song started… and Death, he was so in love with the sound he left the Emperors side. The real flesh and blood Nightingale was singing at the window. It was better than any robot bird. It sang with its own heart and its own words. So moved by the song was Death that he spared the Emperor and he and the real nightingale lived well forever after.”

She glanced at Newt expectantly.

     “You see meaning of the story?”

Newt sniffled loudly and shrugged under his blanket.

     “Death is easily placated with bird noises?”

Sasha swore in Russian and rubbed at her forehead miming an oncoming headache. Newt grinned at her.

     “I’m just kidding. The moral is that flesh and blood beats robots any day and weirdly…that story did kind of answer my question somehow.”

Sasha nodded and pointed to Cherno.

     “My Alpha is the best Jaeger ever built but is still just a robot. Without human brain to guide it-without our real language to speak to it? Not worth the same. Intuition is key. The robot bird did not care about the Emperor to save him…but real nightingale does.”

Newt digested the information with the soup and started to doze off without realizing it. He startled when Sasha stood taking his bowl and giving him a rough pat on the head.

     “You take a nap. Need to sleep then you feel better.”   

Nuzzling down into the wooly blanket pulled his hands and feet in and realized that a nap sounded like a great idea. He yawned and closed his eyes asking one final question that had been nagging at him.

     “Hey… Sasha? Who told you that story at the academy? I mean…which scientist did you ask?”

The Ranger chuckled, her footsteps already growing fainter as she started to walk away.

     “Same person who asked me to look after you and give you soup. Dr. Gottlieb told me.”

Newt’s eyes popped open and he bodily started to chase after her to ask a thousand new follow up questions. She gave him a meaningful look as she passed the heater coil her voice a dangerous snarl.

     “I said, NAP.”

     “Okay! Yes, ma’am! Napping!”

Any further arguing would have been suicide and Newt didn’t feel like dying. He curled up again and felt a new warmth unrelated to the soup or the blanket filling his insides; If Hermann cared enough to send a terrifying maybe member of the Russian mob after him? That was pretty damn good.

   The January dawn was damp and bitter. The heat in the rental car was broken and condensation built on the inside of the windows. Hermann knew he should have been used to cold, but Kodiak Island cold was different from Washington cold. It was a wet dampness that sank into his joints and prodded at his bad hip with needle-teeth.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and fiddled with the top of his new cane.

It was nicer then the hospital issued one. Hermann didn’t allow himself many luxurious purchases but he had allowed himself this. The warm wood on the grip was carved to resemble Coyote Tango; its polished edges already wearing smooth under his anxious caresses. He worried the edge of the engraved Conn-pod like it was some talisman meant for his protection.

Karla cleared her throat uncomfortably. She sat in the seat next to him, pressed so close he could feel her shivering. Bastien and Dietrich sat in the seats in front of them nearest the driver. The black SUV was stuffed with every living member of the Gottlieb family save Lars. Hermann looked from one sibling to another as Karla cleared her throat again louder this time waiting for someone to speak. Bastien was looking at his phone with rapt interest while Dietrich fastidiously ignored everyone by looking out the window at the thick curtain of dense white snowflakes. No one wanted to be the first to talk and Karla finally gave in with a weary and familiar sigh.

      “So. Can anyone tell me why Father brought us out here? Anyone at all? Who wants to tell me why I was torn away from sunny Spain and brought out to the middle of nowhere by a man who hasn’t spoken to me in three years?”
Hermann opened his mouth to answer but hesitated when Dietrich swiveled to glance disdainfully over the seat.

The action, the light and even the squeak of the seat brought a flood of memories Hermann didn’t even realize he had forgotten. He and his brothers in the car being taken to some school event, the long trips to their grandparent’s winter house for skiing. Just like now his father had not been present for any of these occasions. He never traveled with the family. He was always waiting for them impatiently or did not come at all.

     “I’m sorry Karla darling. Did we tear you away from some lurid affair? Some silly book project that was more important than our international security work?”
Karla bristled and Hermann maneuvered his arm under hers, grasping her hand. She squeezed his fingers and snarled a reply her cheeks flushed an angry pink.

     “Our security work? Don’t you mean Lars’ security work? Or does riding his coat tails through life automatically allow you to become part of this prestigious Our? The last I checked you didn’t even complete your degree Dietrich. You wouldn’t be anywhere near the UN planning commission’s money with our fathers influence you…”

Bastian surfaced from whatever world his phone contained and rolled his eyes at his siblings bickering. He had not been out of school for long and like Dietrich he seemed poised to take a job in wartime finances. Unlike Dietrich it obviously held no glamour for him. Hermann had not spoken to either of his brothers since he had stopped teaching in Berlin and joined the academy in its burgeoning Jaeger-sciences division.

His father had not approved of his career change and offered him work as a glorified accountant. Hermann had refused and the turmoil inside his own family had only intensified because of it. Karla had washed her hands of the entire Gottlieb clan before Trespasser had even emerged from the San Francisco Bay.

     “Karla, I don’t know what it is and I can’t get Dietrich to tell me either. Whatever it is it has to be important if he wanted us all to come. “

Karla pressed her shoulder tighter to Hermann’s and glared pointedly at Dietrich.

     “It’s something about the Kaiju but it’s not related to Hermann’s work or he would know. It’s not under the jurisdiction of the PPDC because they put Lars in charge of it…it’s in the middle of Ficken nowhere Washington and yet I’ve seen more security guards than snowflakes. What is going on Dietrich! Just tell us!”

Dietrich’s lips twitched into a sly smile. He looked like Lars when he smiled like that and it made Hermann’s blood run colder. His brother chuckled darkly.

     “You’ll see soon enough. It’s only a few more minutes to the coast. You should feel lucky you get to see the preliminary test before the final plan is revealed to the general public. “

Hermann and Karla had spoken about their father’s mysterious invitation numerous times before he had coaxed her to come with him and investigate. They had remained close over the years and he wondered if she had come more out of curiosity or out of love for him. Hermann had been unable to refuse. He was invited as a representative of the Academy, The PPDC and the Jaeger program and whatever his father wanted him to see was somehow related to the Kaiju and the war effort. The e-mail He and Karla had received was cryptic.

The reveal wasn’t for the press but more for heads of state security and ambassadors from the most notable war-depressed nations. Coming from the airport and in the small way-station where they had waited for their ride Hermann had overheard every Regional from Cantonese to Portuguese. 

He spoke softly to Karla doing all in his power to escape Dietrich’s notice. He had no desire for a fight.

     “Karla, it’s pointless to – “

Dietrich took a loud long sip from his coffee thermos, smacking his lips and shaking his head.

     “Hermann I was most pleased you came. After all, this whole affair is really family business. But then…that matters to you as much as it does to Karla these days doesn’t it? Well, you’re in for the nastiest shock of all, doting on the Jaeger program as you do. Lightcap’s little pet [nestling?]”

Hermann jolted and stared at Dietrich in angry shock. His taunting did not bother him as much as the word he had used, a word of the family language; One of his mother’s words. Karla rarely used the Gottlieb language with him when they spoke on the phone but when she did it was affectionate or reverential. Dietrich’s had uttered their mother’s old pet-name like it was a strange insult.

     “[What-…what did you say?]”

Dietrich leaned back over the seat grinning. He started to speak in the family language the guttural sound of it was crushing.

     “[Oh you still speak Gottlieb? Good to know. Maybe you will remember where your loyalties should lie.  Maybe you’ll stop speaking ill of Father’s financial plans.]”

Hermann felt his face and ear tips blush angrily. He was reacting just as poorly as Karla despite his best efforts. He switched to his family language automatically his brain making the change with barely a conscious effort.

     “[He keeps diverting money from the only program that works. I will not support someone who wastes our limited resources on experimental deterrents. The laser cage over the Breach was a disaster and with the money wasted on it we could have easily built three more mach-2s! I can only imagine what new calamity we’re going to see today!]”

             [“He is a visionary! You are an idiot adhering mindlessly to an unsustainable program! You should be supporting him but you cling to your academy and your PPDC Like a drowning rat!  You are making that predictive model you should know that the jaegers will not work forever.]”

The car went over a series of bumps and Dietrich cursed in German as some of his coffee spilled over the front of his coat. A scalding drop hit Hermann’s cheek but he barely noticed. Something searing and dangerous coiled inside his chest. He wanted to spit the worst words of his Core language; he wanted to screech the worst profanities he had picked up on Kodiak Island. He did neither switching back to English.

     “I will not abandon the PPDC.”

Bastian rolled his eyes still engrossed in his smart-phone, Karla tightened her already iron hold on Hermann’s hand. Dietrich just bared his teeth in a carnivore smile.

     “Well. We’ll see how long that fidelity lasts. We’re here.”

The car turned. The back tires skidded on the icy surface that could barely qualify as a road and Hermann ducked his head to squint out the window. A scattering of scraggly trees parted and the long stretch of flat white tundra gave way to the steel stretch of the Pacific Ocean. Hermann did a double take confused at first by what he was seeing.

He let go of his sister’s hand and opened his door even before the car had come to a complete stop. A slurry of mud and melted snow squished under his dress shoes in the makeshift parking lot and Hermann planted his cane down deep to keep his equilibrium. He leaning his head back mouth agape barely able to understand what he was seeing.

There was a wall on the beach.

The structure was gargantuan, huge beyond description. Hermann muttered something Core under his breath and stumbled past a row of black nondescript cars and featureless dignitaries.  The wall had to be 20 stories tall…maybe more. The bare bones of it steel skeleton lay exposed at the edges where it was unfinished but most of it was a formidable mass of grey concrete standing imposing and immobile against a bleak grey sky.  Workers swarmed over it like an army of ants, hanging from the sides on shaky scaffolding or thin steel wires. It was difficult to see what they were doing from Hermann’s vantage point but it did not look safe.

Karla made her way next to him her mouth falling open, her breath fogging her glasses in large gasping puffs.

     “My god Hermann…What the hell is it?”

It was an engineering marvel that made the Chinese wall seem laughable. It was a cowardly thing for the human race to hide behind. In it Hermann could see the future his father wanted, a future where the human race cringed behind a cage of their own making.

     “Its…It’s an anti-Kaiju wall.”

Bastian held his phone up for a picture and Dietrich smacked it from his hand.

     “Ah Ah. Not yet. You are some of the first to see the finished test section and we want to keep non-necessary civilians in the dark for a bit longer.”

Hermann twisted angrily towards his brother but found he was already striding away in a puffed out swagger. A large stage area had been roped off and all the visiting suits were being ushered that direction by armed US Military Police. Some of them were wearing the PPDC insignia and Hermann wondered idly how many of the Shatterdome Marshalls or higher-ups knew they were here. The PPDC hierarchy was a jumbled mess from country to country.

In the United States there was more of a government presence on both a state and federal level but other countries couldn’t afford to send too many of their own forces and the UN was the guiding hand in their Jaeger programs. This wall project seemed locally funded…more home grown USA ingenuity over UN desperation. Maybe that’s why his father had built the prototype in North Washington instead of Australia or China.

Karla turned and walked with Hermann towards the speaker’s stage. They strode the length of the wall sliding here and there over the slippery, uneven ground. He couldn’t take his eyes off the thing, couldn’t decide if the sight of it made him angrier or frightened.

     “How could they conceive of this…how could they possibly think this was an intelligent course of action. A small category-two might find this difficult but even a cat-2 as large as Onibaba would be able to break through it with enough effort.”

Bastian wiped at a new batch of scratches on his smart phone screen and shrugged. 

     “Wasn’t that one a fluke? That one in Vancouver er…Car-Car something? It was taller than the Japanese crab one, but it wasn’t as big.”

     “Karloff was not an anomaly. If Father had read that biologist’s Serizawa scale proposal or my early predictive model program for the Breach-“

Bastian put his phone moodily in his pocket and replied in Berliner German his gaze moving back and forth between Hermann and Karla.

     “<Maybe you should just hear Father out first. Maybe if you actually listened to him for once you would see why he did this in the first place.>”

Karla blinked falling snow from her eyelashes and shoved her glasses up her nose pointedly with her middle finger.

     “< Grow up, Bastian.>”

Hermann sighed as his brother turned, jogging away from them in an angry huff. He met up with Dietrich who gestured him through a ring of security guards and on to the front of the assembly. Karla considered then veered off course passing the covered rows of foldout chairs full of excited political figures. Hermann trailed her keen on putting some distance between them and the rest of their family.

Using the confusion and noise as a smoke screen they made their way closer to the wall itself. A podium sat high on the bare presentation stage and canvas tent shielded the gathering; although it was already buckling in the center from the weight of the snow. Flakes fell in plumed bunches, gathered on Hermann’s eyelashes. The wet seeped through his clothes, trickling down the collar of his dress shirt. The stage had not been set up far from the muddy mess where the transport vehicles were parked but it was not pressed to the base of the wall. It was set some ways apart surrounded on all sides but a tall jungle gym of workers scaffolding and primitive welding supply platforms. The maze of beam, machinery and workers rose precariously into the sky and Hermann noticed that not one of the wall crawlers was wearing any sort of safety harness.

     “Here Hermann…we can still hear what’s going on.”

Hermann watched his sister brush the snow from the massive tank-like tread of a construction crane. She sat down on it and cleared a place for him gazing up at a wooden walkway above their heads. It was sheltered from the rising wind and Hermann sank down nervously still staring back at the wall with neurotic frequency.

A tired looking construction worker stained grey from head to toe passed by them and Hermann couldn’t help by stare. They looked so drained…exhausted; this sort of work hard to be grueling, especially in this constant bone-numbing cold.

            Karla reached into the pocket of her coat with a shaking hand and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Her fingers were trembling so badly she was barely able to draw a single cigarette from the pack. She offered Hermann one as an afterthought eyes on the people milling around the stage. The weather was doing something to the sound system. An important looking official’s dressed in full military regalia was berating a technician his arms waving in aggravated pantomime.

 Hermann took a cigarette from the pack and raised it to his lips distractedly mind racing in a thousand different directions. He had sworn off smoking when he first joined the academy but his resolve had been tarnished by stress. He was determined to try again as soon as he was assigned to his first Shatterdome posting. That could happen anytime now…he would probably already be getting ready for the move if his father hadn’t asked for him; If Lars hadn’t interfered.

Karla pressed the tip of her lit cigarette to Hermann’s and he pulled in a long drag that made his head swimmy with the pleasant nicotine rush. The sound system kicked on with a long shriek of white noise and the crowd recoiled at once turning their collective attention on the podium. The man behind it, a stern looking military figure in a very clean suit, cleared his throat uneasily and addressed them.

     “Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed members of the United Nations and military representatives, I extend to you a good morning, and an apology for the weather. It’s one hell of a cold one, so we will make this brief.”

There was a scattered muttering, a few strained laughs at this but Hermann thought that collectively they all looked confused or intimidated by their surroundings. He could see only a handful who looked bothered more by the cold then by the tower-sized wall hovering above them. Many of these also wore military uniforms and he guessed they had been here before. They had known what to expect. The man at the microphone continued, his breath coming in huffs of steam that obscured his face.

     “My name is General Graeme, and I am here to introduce Dr. Lars Gottlieb, the man who will give you a brief summary of the “Wall of Life” project. After this we ask you to hold you questions. There will be an in-depth Q and A after this in the warm reception room of the Cascadia hotel. You’ll be glad to know that’s drink’s warmer then hot chocolate will be provided.”

There was more laughter, a bit stronger this time. An air of excitement had slowly replaced the feeling of shock that hung over the assembly. Smatterings of whispers and pointed fingers were just there under the hiss of wind.
General Graeme made a sweeping gesture to the side of the stage and Hermann’s breath caught in his throat. His father appeared from behind a billowing plastic sheet and stepped up to the sputtering microphone like a dark harbinger.

His coat settled about his shoulders and despite the wind his hair remained firmly and immaculately in place. Lars Gottlieb didn’t bother with niceties, didn’t address the crowd. He spoke in that cold and formal voice that Hermann knew so well.

     “This project needs little introduction now that you all have seen the results just behind me. The general has already revealed the title for those unfamiliar with it. This will be our true defense against future Kaiju attacks on shoreline cities. The Wall of Life.”

The cigarette had smoldered forgotten in Hermann’s fingers and he startled when it burned his skin. He flung the half-smoked butt away in disgust. Karla took an absent drag at hers as she nonchalantly held up her smart-phone and focused her camera. None of the guards had noticed she was recording yet. Lars continued speaking louder to be heard over the rising wind.

     “It has taken only three months to build this half-mile section. That is with an on-site staff of one hundred taking round the clock shifts. They are paid in board and ration coupons and every month a bonus of war bonds is given to the hardest workers. Because of this system the wall in full production will not only help with our desperate homelessness problem it will give jobs to many thousands who are doing nothing at present to help the war effort.”

Hermann wanted to scream then. He wanted to scream until his voice was raw. Even if they all knew this-…this thing would do little to keep future monsters away from the shoreline they would be more than willing to build it and keep hungry refugees away from the interior states. Even if it was a costly and ridiculous pipe dream there was no way Lars would stop until he had convinced desperate leaders that he had found the answer to all their problems.

Hermann’s breath came shorter and he tried to swallow a gasp as Lars continued his scathing voice turning into a dull and merciless humming noise. He was so focused on the thoughts racing through his own head Hermann almost missed the screeching tear of metal. There was a lull in Lars’s practiced speech and Karla looked over her shoulder, over the top of the crane where they were crouching. Hermann held back a wave of panic induced nausea and looked up with her. The earsplitting sound of metal rending into pieces was followed up by the sound of clattering and immediately he could see the source.

Some of the scaffolding high on the wall above them had been buffeted so hard by the intensifying storm it had come loose from its supports and was banging hard against an overhanging mess of cross-crossing steel beams. It was not this that caused a new surge of horror to rise cold and watery from the bottom of Hermann’s stomach, it was the tiny figure dangling helpless from the mess of broken cables and wet splintered wood.

A wall-worker, a welder by the look of their helmet, was clinging for dear life to the edge of the broken platform. They had a rudimentary climbing harness but whatever had been attached to it was coming away from the wall. Hermann could see other workers above the fallen one trying desperately to reach them; Lowering rope and chain for them to grab onto.

Karla slipped off the side of the crane her phone still in hand her cigarette forgotten underfoot as she ran pell-mell towards the wall. Hermann staggered after her struggling with his cane, the mud and a howling gust of wind almost threw him backwards. Already he could see the man couldn’t reach what his friends were throwing him. He was struggling to keep his hold as bits of corrugated tin and chunks of rebar fell around him to the ground far below. The worker was at least ten stories up and at the mercy of the elements.  More wall-workers and a few of the MP’s were running past Hermann from all directions shouting encouragement and instructions.

A shocked moan went through the air as the workers gloved hands slipped from the

scaffold, ripping pieces of it with him as he tumbled downwards. Even as the he fell Lars was still patiently telling the audience that everything was going to be alright. His icy, unchanging tone assuring all that the Wall medics would take care of it.

His voice faded into the wind as Hermann pushed himself to move faster, avoiding scattered debris and patches of icy snow. He reached a small circle of onlookers and froze- he had no medical experience but he had felt the anxious, human urge to come and help if he could. It was obvious to everyone that nothing could be done.

If the man had fallen on his neck he would have died instantly. If the snow had not cushioned some of his fall, then perhaps he would have died on impact. These thoughts raced through Hermann’s mind as bile rose up his throat. But the man hadn’t broken his neck and he had survived the fall. Blood was streaming from his nose and mouth, staining the snow under him as he tried desperately to speak.

Another wall-worker hunkered down and gently touched his friend’s cheek. He made no attempt to move him promising over and over in a hushed voice that the medic was coming. He said the man’s name but Hermann didn’t catch it. He was straining to hear the low gurgling rattle, the last stream of language coming from the fallen worker’s mouth.

The fallen worker stared up blindly at the people around him struggling to draw breath as the seconds dragged on into years. He was so young. Under the bent safety helmet, grime and blood Hermann realized they couldn’t be that far apart in age. The pressure in Hermann’s gut was becoming unbearable, the copper tang of blood making his nausea sharp. Hermann was about to turn, to back away when the worker’s eyes found his and Hermann stood stock still face going another shade of pale.

The snow settled on the wall-worker’s eyelashes and collar. He kept staring into Hermann’s face like the two of them had met before. With a last gasping breath, the young man spoke a single sentence; a long beautiful string of musical, nonsense syllables that Hermann did not understand. Each word unfolded like a flower, briefly vacillating with hummingbird colors before it disappeared. He was speaking words of his Core.

Hermann shook his head and choked a reply.

     “I’m sorry. I don’t understand…”

With a sound like a resigned sigh the wall-worker let out a thick rattling breath and what few parts of him that weren’t too broken to move went still. He had died before the medic had even made it to the site. The people around him all began talking at once, their voices exploding into a tidal wave of white noise.

Hermann hadn’t realized Karla was standing beside him until she put a comforting arm around his shoulders and pulled him back. He managed to take three wobbly steps before he vomited near the base of a stack of steel girders. His sister stroked his back soothingly but it did little to quell the feeling of watery shock still swimming in his bowels.

She helped him back towards the stage and Hermann took it all in with bemusement. A man had just died and no one had even understood his last words. His death had been pointless, wasted building something that would do no earthly good to protect them from the Kaiju threat. He was probably not the first and if the wall went forward, if the war continued he would certainly not be the last. Rangers died yes. Rangers and Hangar workers died often. People like Adam Casey had died for the PPDC… but their sacrifice had not been in vain. Sacrifice.

Hermann wiped bile from his mouth with a sleeve his mind racing; the word repeating over and over again in many different languages. In an instant he heard his mother’s gentle voice in his head. Her firm words were an invitation-a call to action and in them he felt the rage at his father, his body and the Kaiju condense into resolve.

       Everyone has to make sacrifices.

And so he would.

The snow was no longer stinging his skin and Hermann came back to himself from a great distance. He looked around and realized Karla had settled him against the stage where his father had been speaking, protected under the canvas awning. People milled about chattering to one another, pressing together in small, secretive clusters. Some were walking back out towards the parking lot while others conversed amongst themselves and admired the wall like tourists in a fine art museum.

None of them seemed unduly phased by the death of the man a few hundred feet away. Dietrich circled close and he and Karla snarling at each other in heated German.

     “<…Maybe I’ll just leak the footage then! See if the world likes what they see. This is all awful…Hermann and I.>”

Dietrich faced Hermann his back to the remaining dignitaries and personnel.  Despite the bitter cold he looked like he was sweating.

     “<That whole area was off limits! Accidents happen! Accidents happen all the time!>”

     “<Oh I’ve no doubt, but what about…>”

A deeper, smoother older voice cut Karla off and Hermann shrunk involuntarily when Lars joined them near the stage. He turned his grey gaze from one sibling to the next and berated them in German his hands held tight behind his back. 

     “<That will be enough. Little harm was done by the accident. The overall impression was a good one. Dietrich when we get to the hotel you will offer apologies to the Australian financial affairs chair first. He has shown the most interest. I believe that once Alaska is underway his country will be the second to start construction. Karla->”

Karla stuttered on her rage and Hermann could see the punk teenager in her rebelling all over again. Her cheeks turned a fiery red as she tried to get hold of her temper.

     “<Are you telling me that what happened was nothing? A man died! This place is a mess! There doesn’t seem to be any standards for safety!>”

Lars held up a hand impatiently. “<I have made it clear that this is a test site. Accidents will happen. When the project moves on to full production then the…kinks, will be ironed out.>”

Karla clenched her teeth fuming, aching to keep arguing but She knew as well as Hermann that it would be futile. Lars Gottlieb always had his way with things and this was no exception. Lars turned to Hermann and assessed him coolly, his nose crinkling at the vomit smell that still clung to his coat.

     “<Hermann I assume you will be writing a favorable and cohesive report for the PPDC after seeing the Wall of Life first hand. Not that they really need it. I’ll be releasing the full project details to them next week. >”

Hermann drew in a dreamy breath and smiled watching his father curiously as the fear drained out of him and was replaced with resolve. Lars had his eyes on his cane, the permanent sneer at the edge of his mouth growing as he regarded the handle. He had hurt Hermann so many times. Hurt the family again and again. This was the last time.

     “<There is still room on my engineering staff for you and I think it should be easy for you to request a transfer now that you are done with that nonsense on Kodiak island.>”

Hermann interrupted his father smoothly, voice steady. He straightened himself and was surprised to find he and Lars were nearly the same height. He spoke in the family language pronouncing his words very carefully.

     “[Father. I will have nothing to do with the Wall of life. I will work for the PPDC and the Jaeger program until the war is over and until then I will not speak a word of any language. Not country, not family…not Core.]”

Dietrich’s eyes bulged as he gaped at Hermann, Karla put a hand to her mouth eyebrows knitting together. Lars did nothing, his face a stoic impossible to read mask. Hermann held his head high and did not look away.

     “[Before you I swear a Vow of Silence.]”

A powerful gust of wind pulled the tarpaulin almost free of its stakes and fresh snow rushed around them. Lars shook his head.

     “This is foolish Hermann. You are making promises you can’t possibly keep. I will be waiting for you with a position and a future once you have come to your bloody senses.” 

Hermann nodded and turned away from Dietrich and his father, brushing past Bastian and a few curious observers as he made his way to the waiting cars. He felt Karla walk next to him, falling in step with his painful stilted gait. He regretted that he could not tell her thank you.

   The rain was cold down Newt’s back. The ground was a muddy slush and he kept stumbling stupidly trying to find traction. The air smelled like burning rubber, live electricity and ammonia from the Kaiju carcass. Dribbles of blood were oozing in and out of the rubbish at his back and he could hear Hermann pacing behind him texting frantic messages that he knew the Shatterdome wouldn’t receive. One half of Otachi’s body had taken out a communication tower and cell-phone reception was dead all over Hong Kong; service blown out by chunks of intestine and viscera raining down from the heavens.

It was hard to say exactly when Hermann had arrived on the scene. No texting meant no direct communication from him and Newt doubted he would have answered even if the option was there. All of his focus was on one singular idea. He had to make this drift work…he had only caught glimpses of the other side in the lab. The precursors, the invaders did not speak any language he could understand. Their wild clicking had been so foreign and overwhelming the whining memories of it were enough to drive Newt insane. It had been like trying to understand the droning of a beehive. But… bees didn’t communicate with buzzing so maybe that horrible earsplitting noise still saturating his frontal lobe was just sound; an empty noise with no meaning. He tried and failed to remember if they had had mouths.

Hermann paced in restless circles. He had a comically ancient comm-radio to his ear and was listening to some report about the situation coming out of LOCCENT deck. Newt tried to ignore him and the endless shrill cicada hum inside his skull. He tried to ignore the cold blanket of shock that threatened to grasp him if he let his guard down. He scuttled up to the top of the baby Kaiju’s skull and choked back a scream of frustration as he searched for a place to jam the sword edge of the neural spike.

It was so fucking hard to tell where he would hit soft brain tissue. The only good thing about the situation was the infants underdeveloped skull was slightly spongier than normal Kaiju bone. If he had a fully grown cat-anything going under the spike he would have needed a jackhammer to get past the flint hard skull casing.

Newt lifted the spike up and prepared to bring it down with his shaking noodley arms. Praying to any goddamn thing that was listening that he had the strength to nail it dead center when Hermann grabbed his foot and held up the radio to get his attention. Newt faltered and nearly lost his balance glaring at Hermann from cracked glasses. His partner was holding up three fingers and thrusting them frantically upwards as if the gesture meant something important. Newt waved the neural back spike back in pure exasperation his voice a shrill screech as he shouted to be heard over the dull roar of vehicle noise surrounding them.

   “What! What? Hermann I don’t have time! I have to plant this before its brain becomes sludge! “

Hermann’s bottom lip quivered and he bit at it waving the radio and the three fingers weaker this time. Newt nodded the meaning of it dawning on him.

   “Yeah…yeah. Triple Event. Just like you said would happen. I know…that’s why I gotta do this like pronto!”

Newt raised his arms above his head and felt his teeth vibrate at the impact as the spike slide firmly into place. He wiggled it back and forth to make sure it was touching something juicy before he jumped down to the muddy, rubble-scattered ground.

It still felt weirdly like he was in many places at once. There was a sense of cold and pressure that he took to be some distant underwater counterpart. An event meant more Kaiju on this side of the breach and he could just feel them behind his own rapid thoughts. If he stopped moving for one instant they might rise up-they might rise up and…

Shaking himself like a wet dog Newt pounded on the keyboard of his makeshift garbage computer and felt a flurry of relief when the systems immediately locked on to the stillborns brain signature without any trouble. He muttered to himself, in what language he wasn’t sure and set the machine to do one final self-scan, just to make sure nothing had been fried in the last drift or jostled out of place on the trip over.

He panted from the effort as he watched the monster motherboard chug, wiping a thin stream of dried blood from the gash in his forehead. This was going to hurt but he could barely think about it. He didn’t want to even consider the obvious. This wasn’t gonna be a thing he walked away from.

Hands pulled him around, thin fingers biting through his jacket and into his shoulders. Hermann stared into Newt’s face his wide brown eyes showing all whites at the edges. He was every bit as out of breath, the hair not being blown by stray gusts of wind plastered down with sweat.

He tightened his grip and closed his eyes and Newt realized he was trembling-shaking violently under his chalky blazer. Then a sudden soft sound escaped his lips and the world at Newt’s periphery went completely silent.The drift rig and the Kaiju pup were pushed away and the whirr of the helicopter muted to harmless white noise. Hermann licked his lips and struggled, choking-straining to say something. Newt didn’t understand he spoke his name and it was a question. 

     “Hermann?...what-“

Hermann opened his eyes and they bored into Newt warm and familiar. Hi words finally came in a shaky, irregular jumble.

     “{I’ll go...with you.}”

 At first Newt wasn’t sure what he had actually heard. He had understood the message in the words but the words themselves weren’t English, German or Cantonese. His heart began to pound hard, kicking his ribs and knocking at his Adams apple. He swallowed thickly and replied in the same language; His language-in Core.

     “{You’re serious? You would do that for me? y-you would do that with me?}"

Hermann tilted his head and gave a pained laugh his eyes nearly lost in the smile-lines around his eyes. It was hard to get the words out Newt realized. He was pushing against years of silence.

He was so caught up in the urgency of drifting with the Kaiju that Hermann suddenly deciding to speak to him after all this time caught Newt by such surprise he couldn’t even think to comment on it. Hermann tapped at the keyboard of the mish-mashed drift rig and the single simulated image of a human brain was divided into two. He spoke again in halting chunks, the sentences incorrect but still perfectly coherent.

     “{w-with worldwide destruction n-alternative? We have a …a choice?}”

Newt stared at him hands opening and closing as he tried to figure out what to say. What language, what word would hold the gravity he wanted? He reached a clenched fist out to Hermann and watched his friend struggle to figure out how to do a simple fist-bump. All he could manage to say was…

     “{Let’s do this.}"

Hermann took one of the squid cap’s from where it nested in a spray of wires. He lowered it onto Newt’s head like a crown, adjusted it with care then nodded and answered in an identically overwrought tone.

     “{Let’s do this}”

   Hermann felt himself floating towards consciousness. He was warm, groggy and nauseous; a combination that he had come to associate with doctors and newly prescribed medication. He pulled his eyes open with difficulty and instantly regretted it. The white ceiling was spinning and a sharp reminder that he was indeed in the infirmary. It took a moment but he remembered the pain that had been gnawing his abdomen reaching such a crescendo he had fallen from his ladder.

The biologist, Geiszler, had found him on the ground…come to his rescue. Why did it have to be him? Hermann had done his best to avoid directly speaking with the man ever since he had first seen him from a distance. There had been something electric about Dr. Geiszler. He caused an infuriating itch inside Hermann’s heart and he had no idea how to scratch it.

A fan was running near the infirmary bed, the white noise lulling and the rush of circulating air cool in the enclosed space. Hermann tried to recall exactly what had happened after he fell. He had listened to Dr. Geiszler chatter at him in his high-pitched squeak of a voice and the man had said something…something about- appendixes. Hermann moved a hand down sluggishly to rest on his abdomen and sure enough a swath of fresh bandages told him everything he needed to know.

The fever and pain had nothing to do with his MS or his previous brush with internal infection. He had simply needed to have his appendix out. How utterly embarrassing; struck down in the middle of essential war work because he ignored the symptoms of an easily fixable condition. Hermann winced and wished fervently that painkillers could wipe out shame as easily as pain.

He had to get back to work. He had to get his latest predictive model to the head of his department right away not to mention he had programming to start for some yet unnamed Mark-2 Jaeger whose components had already reached the production phase. Hermann felt his pulse pick up and his blood pound arrhythmically at his wrist and temples as panic set in. He tried to sit up, made it halfway then gave up. The pain was dulled but the muscles in his stomach felt weak and quivery.

He sank back down and let his eyes wander the hospital room, trying to think about anything but the piles of unfinished paperwork he needed to be doing. After ten minutes of this his eyelids felt heavy and he started to flitter out of consciousness and into waking dreams.

His mother spoke to him in a gentle voice from the edge of the woods. A warm wind pulled at her sundress and her wide-brimmed hat. She walked towards him and held out her hand beaming until her eyes nearly disappeared in the smile lines at the corners. Hermann moved towards her but never seemed to get any closer. The tall grass brushed his hands, whispering against his clothes.

He startled a bird in the grass and gasped as it flew up into the blue sky it might have been a woodpigeon but it was difficult to tell in the blur of feathers. His mother tracked its progress a hand to her eyes as she squinted against the sun. She turned and started to speak although Hermann was having difficulty hearing the words.

He broke into a run, surprised to find no pain in his leg and hip. The world was rushing around him and finally he seemed to be making some small bit of progress. The ground was muddy under the soles of his shoes and Hermann found himself slipping, struggling against some invisible gelatin wall that was keeping him from that final burst of speed that would bring her within arm’s reach.

Hermann could see her lips moving, her words just starting to become audible on the soundless breeze. He couldn’t tell what language she was speaking. It wasn’t Regional but it had some trace of German-it wasn’t family either. There was a lack of the guttural churning of syllables. Hermann understood the words, it was like they were deeply ingrained in him but he could not understand why.

 A halo of light formed around his mother’s head and grew so intense it was like a star going super nova. Her features blurred into a solid mass of purple shadows and the trees around her exploded slowly into splintery fireworks made of leaves and branches.
She was still speaking, undisturbed by the chaos her arms outstretched her voice calm and oddly masculine.

     “{Yeah I know I’m talking a lot but I just feel bad-…}”

The light engulfed the whole world. The detonating forest, the windblown field, the startled birds and summer-washed sky all disappeared into the nuclear blast that swallowed the universe. Hermann’s heart twisted when he realized that his mother was been speaking Core. But it had not been her own...it was not the plush and rose colored words he had heard slip from her mouth when she thought she was alone in the kitchen. It was not the language that he had heard at the end when she died in a cold, sterile hospital room.              

     “{I mean it wasn’t my fault right?}”

This language was golden and familiar .Hermann had spoken it to model rockets put carefully put together in the safety of his room. It was the language he knew as intimately as constellations. It was a puzzle language, a sweater language; a sea salt, pastry and chalk- dust language. Someone was speaking fluently in Hermann’s own Core.

Hermann opened his eyes slowly, wincing against the dim light. The harsh florescent lights above him were off. Someone had been kind enough to bring a table lamp while he had wavered in and out of consciousness. It was difficult to tell how much time had passed, like most of the Shatterdome the hospital wing had no windows. Hermann froze eyes wide as the voice from his dreams spoke again in that Core dialect that he was sure no one else would ever understand.

     “{Man I am glad you are passed out because I sometimes chatter in Core when I’m nervous. Not like you would understand anyway but…you know its weird just talking this openingly in front of a total stranger.}”

Beyond the groggy drug-laden stupor Hermann felt a wild joy. It bubbled up through his stomach and he wanted desperately to open his mouth and answer back. I understand everything! Every word! What are the odds? What are the chances I would ever find you! In the same moment he was already saying these words in his head he felt the joy crumple in on itself like a car crash. He had made a promise...a vow; to himself, his mother, his planet.

 There was a horrible sensation of freefalling; Hermann felt his heart plunge down into an elevator shaft full of ice water. He stared fearfully at the person speaking.  It was the man, the doctor?-who had come to his aid before. His face was stubbly, round and friendly and covered with freckles. His hands were never still and everything about him was expressive…beautiful. It was Geiszler again, Dr. Newton Geiszler.

     “{You know it’s funny because I had been working myself up to get really angry at you? You had been avoiding me and your music was too loud but now that I’m here...I just...you don’t seem so bad.}”

Hermann squeezed his eyes shut and held still as possible afraid Geiszler would turn and see him awake. If Newton was caught speaking Core he would no doubt be embarrassed and Hermann didn’t want him to stop. Hearing each word spill out of his mouth was like having an out of body experience. Every pearl and snake the he uttered was a déjà-vu slap in the face. The impulse to speak back was difficult to choke down and Hermann’s heart was pounding so hard he could feel his chest vibrating under his hospital shift. Thank god his vitals weren’t being monitored-he must have had a smooth surgery and they felt no need for it. 

     “{I can’t quite put my finger on why but you aren’t so bad but you- I just...Well maybe it’s because you’re passed out and you’re not giving me a death glare.  You are really…really nice to look at when you’re sleeping. All cheek bones and eyelashes…you look tired though. I’m tired too.}”

It struck Hermann then that he knew Geiszler from somewhere. He had heard his name often enough in scientific circles. The two of them were in different fields but they’re research often overlapped. Had the man tried to contact him before? Perhaps sent him an e-mail or letter? Hermann had been lax with all correspondence in the past year. The only people he bothered to speak to were Lightcap…and Mako.

A memory surfaced, swimmy and faded by time and painkillers. Mako’s name stirred it from deep in his brain and he could see the small disheveled drunk man on the stage in the glitzy Hollywood ballroom. That screechy drunken person who had skittered away from security guards as he screamed about Kaiju. The tattoos he had glimpsed on Newton’s arms in his lab were just like the sleeve he had seen on that sloppy banshee of a human being in LA. That idiot was his Argot. 

Hermann felt disappointment mix into the confusing mess of emotions crashing around inside him. He had found his soulmate and he was going to lose him. Yes, he had to come to terms with that but…he could take comfort in the idea that, handsome as he was, he seemed like a brash and chaotic creature. He just had to convince himself this was for the best. Now that he knew who he had to avoid it would make the vow all the easier to keep.

Newton’s hand was a pressure on the side of the bed, creeping to where Hermann’s hand rested. His voice had lowered further and the Core kept slipping from him. The joy that Hermann found in the words just seconds before was turning to a sort of angry bitterness. This had been an interruption he didn’t need, another distraction and now all he wanted was for the tender voice to stop talking. It hurt too much.

     {When you wake up maybe we could do something when you feel better, whatever you were working on seemed cool. Together I bet maybe we could…}

There was a distant squeak as a door opened and Hermann felt Geiszler’s hand fly backwards. The man switched instantly to English, greeting whoever had come in with a guilty fluster.

      “Oh hey, er...he’s not awake yet.”

The cool, patient voice of what Hermann took to be an infirmary nurse echoed from the doorframe as her footsteps clicked against the linoleum.

     “That’s normal for someone recovering from surgery. I’m just in to tell you that you’re being paged by someone in Arms Department? A General Scieszka? He said you were late to a consultation.” 

     “Oh FUCK me running! I forgot that was today!”

There was a frantic rustling, the sound of a bag being jostled, a zipper being brought together. Hermann listened as Newton gathered his things and started for the door at a run. He turned speaking to the nurse as he scrambled to the larger Shatterdome beyond.

     “Hey if he wakes up can you call me? Or page me or whatever? Just whenever that happens even if I’m in a meeting I’ll be…”

Dr. Geiszler’s voice was faded into a muted buzz as the door shut behind him. Hermann waited until he was sure both him and the nurse had left him alone before he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He felt so heavy, numb and cold all at once. It was the familiar blanket of emotional shock that he had not felt since his mother had passed; since the incident at the wall.

His Argot wasn’t important. He wasn’t important. His happiness was secondary to his mission and the war would not be over for a long…long time. Hermann let these words repeat over and over in his head like a mantra, like a magic spell and finally the painkillers drug him down into real sleep. He had been completely unaware that he had been crying.

The celebrations were thunderous. It seemed like the LOCCENT staff would never stop cheering. The maintenance workers and engineers seemed to have a bottomless well of alcohol and it was flowing freely as the relieved tears.
Everywhere he turned Newt found people singing in hundreds of Regional dialects, shouting their family languages into borrowed cell phones. Overjoyed to tell their loved ones that the war was over…they would be home soon.

The apocalypse was officially canceled. Hidden among all these burbling voices were the lower more frantic whispers of Core languages. Newt lost count of the number of times he turned down what he assumed would be an empty hallway and came upon a necking couple moaning to one another in Core. He wondered if they even understood each other. Maybe some of them did by a percentage…maybe it really didn’t matter in the long run. Relief could be a powerful aphrodisiac and there would be a lot of kids sharing the same birthday in nine months.

Newt avoided the couples and shouting hangar bay crew, trying to keep to the vacant sections and follow the pull that simultaneously tugged at his heart and whispered in his brain. Hermann couldn’t travel very fast on a good day and now his body was sore from exertion. The only reason he had gotten away from Newt at all was because the higher ups had insisted on a briefing. Newt had fumbled for words and blasted his way through a scrambled explanation of the last twenty-four hours to a big wall of television people. It was all a blur and he would still be there stuttering out terrible answers to confused dignitaries if he hadn’t been rescued by the new Marshall-by-proxy Hercules Hansen.

That Hermann had run didn’t really surprise Newt. He hadn’t done it to hurt his feelings; he was having a minor freak out. Hell, the only reason Newt wasn’t right there with him was because he had a mission. Find Hermann, talk to him.
The hallway began to bow in the center. Newt realized he was heading down hill into the deep heart of the Shatterdome itself. There was nothing down there but storage and a messy labyrinth of access tunnels that lead to the main bay. Newt stopped in a small round hallway with several branching passages and closed his eyes checking to see where his Hermann compass pointed.

 Impressions and small jumbles of words snaked over his brain and he knew all at once where Hermann was hiding. Newt sighed and wiped at his nose heading to the right, he let his hand run over the ragged concrete wall his shadow flickering in the harsh yellow emergency lights. He spotted a massive metal door left ajar and picked up the pace pulling it the rest of the way open with obvious effort. It was like opening the hatch on a tank.

The room was deceptively large and intensely silent. Newt had never been here before but he had seen it in Hermann’s memories. It was round and the walls were made of polished granite muffled by thick rubber pads to discourage echoes. At the center of the room rising from floor to ceiling sat the exposed workings of a conn-pod. The naked skeleton held everything a normal pod would include. Two sets of foot-pedals, neural cradles and all the essential HUD panels.

Every Shatterdome had some form of training simulator but Newt was surprised how elaborate this one was. He blinked tired eyes at the electrical arrays, the silent observation deck and the dark set of screens that would act as the eye-shield when the place was in use.  He was so distracted by the complexity of the set-up he almost missed the most important thing in the room.

Hermann sat at the center of the skeletal sim-pod his head lowered and his shoulders slumped. He sat near the left side pilot rig clutching his cane with both hands his long legs splayed out in a way that would have been hilarious if his expression wasn’t so despondent.

Newt approached Hermann slowly afraid he would bolt like a scared animal if he made a sudden noise. He ran a careful hand along the side of the pod-simulator letting his fingernails drag on the outside. It created a soft rasping noise on the smooth metal and the whisper of sound was just enough to get Hermann’s attention. He turned toward Newt and opened his mouth to say something before he stopped eyes wide, breath coming in panting gasps.

His fear was palpable in the drift, blood red and icicle sharp. Newt held his ground and didn’t move any closer eyes locked on Hermann expectantly. He didn’t want to prod but it seemed like his partner was choking on his own voice. He was trying to force himself to use a neglected tool like someone who had just awakened from a coma fails to walk with atrophied muscles.

Hermann hugged himself and curled into the side of the training pod eyes on the floor. He looked so lost in the moment and frail from the day’s events. He tried once more to speak but nothing came out but a weak gulping noise like a bullfrog’s croak. He scared himself with the sound and pressed his head miserably into pale shaking hands. Whatever miracle that had let him speak in the rubble of Hong Kong had clearly worn off. Newt watched him and took a deep breath.

The panic attack that he was sure was coming after he and Hermann’s last hug on the LOCCENT deck was being held at bay. He took a tenuous step upwards into the conn-pod simulator, around one of the fake walls and leaned against a drift station with a weary groan, glad to take some of the weight off his worn-out chuck Taylors. 

     “What a day huh? War ending…Drifting. You know I met a mobster today? Almost got caught in a Kaiju tongue orgy. You missed all that fun.”

Hermann didn’t raise his head from his hands but the way his shoulders perked, the way his body tensed. All of it read like a book in big-block letters. He was listening; hanging on Newt’s every word.

     “I don’t think I’ll tell you that story though…how about this one I’ve been working on awhile? Long ass time. Several goddamn decades in fact. It’s still in the first draft and it needs some editing but it’s getting there. I’d like your feedback on the ending though? Not really sure how to end it.”

Hermann snuffled into the sleeve of his blazer. He was still soaking wet. Water dripped from his hair down his neck and collar. Newt could feel all of it. He could feel the pain thrumming in Hermann’s bones and running in electrical charges down his bad leg. He could feel the beginnings of a blister on his heel from his ill-fitting shoe. He wondered how much of his pain his partner felt. Did he know he was just about five minutes away from collapsing completely? Hermann finally nodded just barely. Yes, that motion said, I want to hear that story.

Newt shuffled half a step closer, making his unsubtle way to the next support hook over. He spared a glance down at the neck pedals suspended above the fake innards of the replica Jaeger. Despite the fact it was all for training purposes the drop was still a very real way down.

Taking a deep breath Newt pulled off his glasses and nervously polished the steam and water droplets from his thick spattered lenses. The compulsive reparative motion eased his mind and the first words of Core Lingua slipped effortlessly off his tongue.

     “{So once upon a time there was…there was a kid who had no friends. A prince. A prince that had no friends. He was a rock star prince who was good at school and-..great at science and music and he wanted everyone to think he was great.}”

Hermann raised his eyes up and blinked a stray stream of water from his hairline. He stared at Newt in rapt fascination, all his focus on the man’s mouth. Newt knew that he could understand every word. Speaking his Core to Hermann felt like drifting with him all over again. It was just the two of them alone and connected by a single thought. They shared the patterns and music of a single language. It was all theirs…just theirs.

     “{So the prince wandered around trying to make people like him but it was like…it was like nobody could understand him. He tried to change into different things but it didn’t really work. Then one day this big hole opened up and monsters poured out and the Prince was fascinated by them. He was way into the monsters but he also…he also thought if he could figure them out maybe people would..}”

Newt stopped unsure how to say what he wanted to say. He bit the tip of his tongue and his brow furrowed as he puzzled at it.

     “{L-love him?}”

The voice did not sound like Alan Rickman or David Bowie or Liam Neeson. It was a shy, thin voice husky from disuse, with an air of gorgeous unabashed snootiness at the edges. It was the most beautiful voice in the whole fucking universe. Newt watched Hermann’s hands fall tiredly to his sides, his body unfolding. They were finally getting somewhere, Newt thought excitedly. Now he just had to get the wheels turning. He continued doggedly on trying not to let the excitement take over. Core was difficult to get out if he was talking too fast.

     “{Maybe love? Maybe at least take him seriously. The prince was respected as an academic but people still thought he was weird. Then one day a magical- er...frog! Yeah a magical frog came into his life.}”

Hermann struggled but the smile came anyway cracking the side of his wide mouth into a grin. He spoke in a whisper seemingly afraid to raise his voice.

     “{A frog?}”

     “{Yes a frog! A beautiful frog that couldn’t croak but he was good at writing and he listened to the prince and argued with him and…well the frog cared about him.}”

Newt took another step forward fighting for every inch. His brain was so full of Core words and memories he wasn’t sure he could call up English anymore. It would just be him and Hermann speaking to each other for the rest of their lives and somehow they would make it work. They had always been able to make it work.

     “{He and the frog worked hard to stop the monsters. Fight the dragons...and lots of fairy godmothers and good peasants were lost on the way but all the prince wanted was to be with that frog…even if he never said anything he didn’t NEED to ...The prince would have been ok with that too. But the frog didn’t seem to feel that way back. The frog needed to learn to express himself better probably.}”

Hermann choked on a wave of tears and looked about ready to throw up again. Newt doubted he had anything left in him to throw up. Reaching out Newt lay a tentative hand on Hermann’s shoulder brushing fingertips against the back of his neck. The hair there was soft to the touch. He smelled like the harsh military grade Shatterdome soap and wet chalk dust. Hermann stuttered on something in Bavarian before moving to Core again. 

     “{The frog…had taken a vow.}”            

     “{The prince really only got the whole story on the vow after they drifted.}”    

Newt wrapped careful arms around Hermann’s neck testing the waters. He didn’t flinch and Newt took this as a positive sign.

     “{The prince didn’t know about his family, or the wall or-or any of that.}

Sitting down next to Hermann, Newt eased in close. He didn’t notice the blood dripping from his nose until Hermann reached out with a bare hand to wipe it away.

     “{Hermann, I’m…you knew. You knew for years that we shared a Core language…I-I know the vow was important but couldn’t you have told me sooner?}”

Hermann winced, his eyes squinching shut; he shook his head slowly still struggling to put what he was thinking into words.

     “{If I had told you…I w-wouldn’t have been able to keep my promise to my mother. I wouldn’t h-have lasted the war. I had to harden my heart against you like I did everything else.}”

He choked on the syrupy thick syllables, the sweetness of certain words. Newt stroked his shoulder watching his throat bob as he swallowed trying to memorize every detail of him.

     “{You know…technically, Newton, I did not keep my vow. I broke it too soon near the end. The war wasn’t quite over.}”

 Hermann gazed down at his hands meaningfully and Newt knew from the drift that he was searching for the telltale signs of white feathers.

     “{You were close…real close. You know she would have been proud of you either way. And- you know what’s funny? I saw in the drift when your mom compared Golems to Kaiju?}”

     “{Yes?}”

     “{Well…in the 20’s there was a play called R.U.R and it’s where we get the word Robot from. Like…it was the first time it was ever used…and the guy who wrote the play? He based the robots on Golem folklore so…Jaegers and Kaiju are both like Golems. We made monsters to fight monsters right? Or-…is that stupid?}”

Hermann blinked at him in astonishment and his smile was radiant.

     “{That’s wonderful. I-I did not know that.}”

     “{Ha- yeah I thought you might like that bit of stupid trivia.}”

There was a long pause…a moment of vacuum in the singsong conversation and in It Hermann pressed his lips to Newt’s, slowly at first and then with more desperation. The drift swirled with a thousand just discovered words a hundred new ideas that could now be described. Newt pressed back and felt bone thin fingers carding through his tangled hair.

They broke apart, coming up for air and he shuddered at the sheer magnitude of it all. Hermann spoke and the words sounded more sure, his voice, which Newt had never come remotely close to guessing the sound of, gaining volume with use.  

     “{I did not mean to live in my mother’s stories…but then I never expected a kiss from a prince.}”         

Newt laughed nervously wiping at a bit of overeager spit from the edge of his lips.

     “{Well I broke the curse with a Drift. The frog is a prince for good. Now-…we just have to break that other curse on you.}”

His gaze drifted uncomfortably down to the cane leaning ominously against Hermann’s leg. Hermann gave it a half-hearted shove letting the brass handle hit the Conn-pod ground with a sharp reverberating smack.

     “{I just…}”

Hermann lay careful hands on either side of Newt’s face.

      “{Even if you can’t break that spell…even if the bad Golems come back. I just want to be part of your story. I just want to talk to you – I love you.}”

Newt leaned in to give him a softer kiss on the cheek hugging him tightly. He could feel Hermann’s heart beating and hear the whistle of breath through his nose. He rocked them both back and forth.

     “{And they lived happily ever after.}”