Greg Cox - Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization

“Until it hatched like a butterfly into the creature you saw,” Serizawa. “We call it a MUTO.”

The biology, in fact, was fairly basic, albeit on a monstrous scale. The larval form of various insects and arthropods were basically eating machines, consuming massive amounts of nutrients before creating a cocoon in which to undergo the metamorphosis into their adult stage. Serizawa called up an image of the massive cocoon, which had been discovered fifteen years ago atop the ruins of the Janjira plant, not long after the earlier disaster in the Philippines.

“You’re saying you knew about this… thing … the whole time?” Ford shook his head, trying to take it all in. “And kept it a secret? Lied to everyone?”

Serizawa remembered a family photo he had found among Ford’s effects.

“You have a son, Mr. Brody. Would you tell him there are monsters in the world? Beyond our control? We believed that horror was better kept buried.”

“But you let it feed ?” Ford said. “Why not kill it when you had the chance?”

“It was absorbing radiation from the reactors,” Graham said. “Vast doses, like a sponge. We worried killing it might have released that radiation, endangering millions.”

Serizawa nodded. “The MUTO caused the catastrophe, but also prevented it from spreading.” Without the cocoon, and the immense pupa developing inside it, the quarantine zone would have indeed been the radioactive wasteland they had let the world believe it was. “That’s why Monarch’s mission was to contain it, to study its biology. To understand it.”

But, yes,” he thought regretfully, we waited too long.

“We knew the creature was having an electrical effect on everything within a close proximity,” Graham said. “What we didn’t know was that it could harness that same power in an EMP attack.”

Footage from Janjira showed the winged creature unleashing its electromagnetic pulse — a heartbeat before the pulse shorted out the monitors.

“Your father did,” Graham said. “He predicted it.”

“What else did he say?” Serizawa asked. “Anything at all?”

“I–I don’t know,” Ford confessed, his voice cracking. “I always thought he was crazy, obsessed. I didn’t listen .” He ran a hand through his hair, overwrought, while he visibly struggled to recall his father’s theories. “He said it was some kind of animal call. Like something… talking.”

“Talking?” Serizawa sat up straight. Was Ford implying there was more than one signal?

Ford nodded. “Yeah, he was studying something. Echolocation .”

Serizawa and Graham stared at each other in shock. Ford clearly had no idea what a bombshell he’d just dropped, but the two scientists immediately grasped the implications. They glanced down at an indistinct snapshot of the majestic creature from the ocean’s floor, last seen sixty years ago.

Could they truly be dealing with… him?

“If the MUTO was talking that day,” Serizawa reasoned, “your father must have discovered something talking back .”

Gripped by a sense of extraordinary urgency, he turned to Graham. “Go back through the data, search for a response call.”

She sat down at her laptop, while the projector continued to cycle through the relevant images. Serizawa slumped down into a chair. Ford stared at the wall, trying to make sense of it all. It was a lot to absorb.

“This parasite… it’s still out there,” he said. “Where’s it headed?”

“The MUTO is still young, still growing,” Serizawa said. “It will be looking for food.”

“Sources of radiation,” Graham added, glancing up from her laptop. “We’re monitoring all known sites, but if we don’t find it soon…”

Her voice trailed off, not needing to say more.

“It killed both my parents,” Ford said. “There must be something we can do.”

Serizawa had his doubts, at least as far as humanity’s ability to cope with the threat.

“Nature has an order, Mr. Brody. A power to rebalance.”

He stared up at the wall, where Godzilla could be glimpsed once more. The U.S. Army had attempted to destroy the beast with an atomic bomb, but no remains had been found afterwards. Some believed (or hoped) that Godzilla had been completely vaporized by the blast, but that may have been wishful thinking.

“I believe he is that power.”

A bugler played taps, but only a small honor guard was in attendance. Standing on the wide rear deck of the Saratoga , as the sun slowly sank into the horizon, Ford saluted stoically as his father’s body was put to the rest. He had shed the battered radiation suit, but was still wearing rumpled civvies he’d left Joe’s apartment in. Serizawa was also present as Joe Brody’s flag-draped body slid off the deck into the sea. It disappeared quickly beneath the churning waves.

Goodbye, Dad , Ford thought. I wish you could go home with me.

It occurred to him that neither his father nor his mother had a proper grave, but that was not something he wanted to dwell on at the moment. Petty Officer Thatch was waiting off to one side, maintaining a respectful distance while Ford bid farewell to his father, but Ford knew he had to get going if he wanted to make it back to Elle and Sam. He stared for a few more minutes at the endless expanse of ocean that was now Joe Brody’s final resting-place before walking over to Thatch.

It was time to go.

Thatch escorted him across the carrier’s expansive flight deck, which was noisy and abuzz with activity. Aside from “the island,” a multi-level command center topped by a towering array of radar and communications antenna, the top deck of the Saratoga was a flat expanse used as a runway to land and launch a wide variety of aircraft. There was also room to park a few dozen planes, although the majority of the carrier’s eighty-plus aircraft were stored below decks in the hangar bay. A transport chopper was loading off to one side of the runway. Busy seamen worked quickly and efficiently to stow their gear aboard the helicopter as it prepped for take off. Ford quickened his pace, not wanting to be left behind. Thatch shouted to be heard above the clamor.

“Right now we’re fifty miles off Hawaii,” Thatch explained. “This transport will take you there. You’re on a commercial flight back to San Francisco.”

Ford was grateful for the arrangements made on his behalf, especially given everything else that was going on. He saluted Thatch as he boarded the chopper and quickly found a seat. He spotted Serizawa watching from the deck a short distance away.

The chopper’s rotors were already spinning up. Within moments, the helicopter lifted off from the flight deck, carrying Ford away from the Saratoga. In the fading twilight, he made out a faint smudge of land in the distance, which he knew to be the islands of Hawaii. His next stop on his way back to his family. In all the chaos and tragedy of the last forty-eight hours, there’d been no chance to even try to get in touch with Elle back in San Francisco. He wished he was bringing back better news.

Peering down from the chopper, he spied the tiny figure of Dr. Serizawa. The Japanese scientist watched the helicopter depart before turning back to reenter the ship. Ford had left his father’s research aboard the ship. With any luck, it would prove useful to the people in charge of figuring out what to do about the giant winged monster on the loose.

If not, the whole world could be in serious trouble.

The TV news was on in the background as Elle and Sam fixed dinner in the kitchen. Although the sound had been muted, a crawl played across the bottom of the screen: