“It could,” the scientist conceded. “But what then?” He indicated the monitors tracking Godzilla. “What if he’s been down there all this time? With no interest in our world, but a part of it, a part of the balance. If we kill him, there’s no telling what may come.”

Stenz listened intently. “Yes? Go on.”

“The MUTOs are stronger in a pair, but maybe not enough. He could defeat them.”

“You’re suggesting we let them meet and duke it out?” the admiral asked, sounding dubious. “Then what? Just hope the big one wins and swims back where he came from? And if he loses, are you willing to bet more lives on that?”

Serizawa wasn’t certain. He was fully aware of how reckless his proposal must sound, as well as the awesome gravity of the decision before them. He considered all the human lives hanging in the balance. At least seven million, as Stenz had observed, and perhaps billions more. Was he truly prepared to trust humanity’s future to a legendary monster?

And ask Stenz to do the same?

He shook his head sadly. “I can only bet my own.”

Stenz nodded, appreciating the scientist’s candor.

“Me, too, Doctor,” he said regretfully. No doubt he had been hoping for a viable alternative to the hellish course of action before him. “That’s why I have no choice.” He turned away from Serizawa to address Martinez. “Execute our evacuation contingencies for San Francisco Bay. And find me a detonation site at least twenty miles from shore. If these things are attracted to our bombs, let’s draw them out and finish this.”

Serizawa wondered if that was truly possible.

* * *

Night had fallen on the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains as the train skirted along high wooded ridges. Darkness cloaked the wilderness through which the tracks ran, but evidence of the female MUTO’s destructive migration could still be seen around every curve. Ford and his fellow soldiers spied broken bridges, flattened trees, and suspiciously recent rockslides. The roar of the locomotive drowned out the usual nocturnal sounds you might expect to hear from the woods at this time of night, but Ford suspected that any local wildlife had long since fled from the monstrous invader. As he understood it, the train’s route took it straight through “the heart of darkness”— right past the new MUTO. This was a calculated risk, to say the least, but there had been no quicker overland route.

No wonder he hadn’t seen a single deer or owl yet.