The feverish activity in Tac-Ops slowed as the seeming hopelessness of their efforts sank in. Time was running out and so were their options. The odds against them felt insurmountable, but Stenz refused to give up. Failure in this instance was more than unacceptable. It was inconceivable.

Almost a hundred thousand people.

“Find a way to get men in there,” he ordered. “We need to disarm that warhead.” He turned to Serizawa, who had been keeping his own council during the escalating crisis. The scientist stood quietly off to the side with his colleague, Graham. “Your alpha predator, Doctor. ‘Godzilla.’ You really think he has a chance?”

Serizawa turned toward the rear of the trailer, where large plate-glass windows looked out over the fogbound bay and the imperiled city beyond. Even from this distance, the male could be glimpsed soaring over San Francisco, pursued by Godzilla, who was wading majestically toward the blacked-out waterfront. No longer detained by tanks or jet fighters, the invincible leviathan was closing in on his primordial prey, driven by a powerful biological instinct.

“The arrogance of Man is thinking Nature is in our control, and not the other way around.” Serizawa turned solemnly toward the others and nodded gravely. “Let them fight.”

* * *

Elle ran for her life, along with everyone else still downtown. Thousands of terrified men, women, and children ran through the streets. Panicked people crowded toward a BART subway entrance, seeking shelter from the titanic monsters that had invaded the city. Billowing plumes of smoke and fire rose to meet the falling rain. Abandoned vehicles clotted the streets. Elle squeezed between an unmoving taxi and a delivery van as she tried to make it to the stairs leading down to the subway. The frantic mob carried her along; she couldn’t have changed direction if she’d wanted to. She glanced wildly around her, afraid that the disaster would find her before she could reach safety. She had waited for Ford as long as she could, but obviously they had run out of time. Skyscrapers and office buildings blocked her view, but wide concrete canyons offered fleeting glimpses of the madness that had come to her city.

A giant winged monster, looking something like a huge alien insect, perched atop two adjacent high-rises, straddling them as though there were stilts. Despite her terror, Elle couldn’t look away. It was one thing to see a blurry image on TV or the internet; it was something else altogether to actually see a creature that big with your own eyes and be confronted with the escapable fact that such monsters truly existed. According to the news reports, this was the male “MUTO” and there was a female running amok as well. The creature lifted its head. An ear-piercing howl issued from its jaws.